Guest Editorial: An industrial viewpoint
Mike Hennell · Software Testing Verification and Reliability · 2004
A curious facet of software development is the poor uptake of many of the principles of software testing in industrial environments.In some industries, notably the avionics and nuclear sectors, software producers have no choice but to demonstrate thorough testing of their software.Interestingly, parts of the telecommunications industry, although answerable to no certification body, have also always had a tradition of rigorously testing their software, probably as a result of pioneering research at Bell Labs in New Jersey back in the 1960s.From an industry viewpoint, there is often a fear that bad news, brought to light by a rigorous testing process, will extend the time-to-market and result in a loss of market share.However, part of the problem of poor uptake must be borne by academic researchers because industry still lacks answers to key motivating factors such as:• What is the quality gain per unit cost?• What is the benefit in terms of customer satisfaction?• What is the long-term financial benefit?Answers to these and other questions would help testers make a strong case to managers for adequate resources (time, tools and people) to perform testing to significantly higher standards.It is pleasing to see that the two papers included in this issue of the journal do address real-world issues of industrial relevance.Although the techniques discussed in the papers are very different (one is concerned with software inspections, the other with testing embedded systems using modelling, simulation and design-of-experiments), they do, in essence, share a common concern: the need for an effective oracle.An oracle is an arbiter of software behaviour that is able to judge what is correct or, at least, what is deemed to be acceptable.In the case of inspections the oracle is human of course; in the other case discussed here, the oracle is a simulation model of the desired system and is therefore amenable to automation.In the first paper, 'Eight maxims for software inspectors', Diane Kelly and Terry Shepard describe how they collected the comments of inspectors over a period of three years and organized these comments into themes, with the net result being the synthesis of the eight maxims, i.e. suggested rules for effective inspections.Software inspection is one of the few verification and validation (V&V) techniques widely used in industry.It could be argued that it should always be used because there are things that humans can find which no automated tool will detect.On the other hand, the expense of deploying human resources is considerable and a balance needs to be struck between human resource usage and automation.The paper does not consider the relationship with automation but it does address important aspects such as maximizing effectiveness by measurement, standards and control.For example, given the expense of such a people-centric activity, it is important to match people's expertise with the task at hand, otherwise effort could be wasted or, at best, it might be less fruitful