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  • Article
    Citation - WoS: 123
    Citation - Scopus: 156
    Test Case Prioritization: a Systematic Mapping Study
    (Springer, 2013) Catal, Cagatay; Mishra, Deepti
    Test case prioritization techniques, which are used to improve the cost-effectiveness of regression testing, order test cases in such a way that those cases that are expected to outperform others in detecting software faults are run earlier in the testing phase. The objective of this study is to examine what kind of techniques have been widely used in papers on this subject, determine which aspects of test case prioritization have been studied, provide a basis for the improvement of test case prioritization research, and evaluate the current trends of this research area. We searched for papers in the following five electronic databases: IEEE Explorer, ACM Digital Library, Science Direct, Springer, and Wiley. Initially, the search string retrieved 202 studies, but upon further examination of titles and abstracts, 120 papers were identified as related to test case prioritization. There exists a large variety of prioritization techniques in the literature, with coverage-based prioritization techniques (i.e., prioritization in terms of the number of statements, basic blocks, or methods test cases cover) dominating the field. The proportion of papers on model-based techniques is on the rise, yet the growth rate is still slow. The proportion of papers that use datasets from industrial projects is found to be 64 %, while those that utilize public datasets for validation are only 38 %. On the basis of this study, the following recommendations are provided for researchers: (1) Give preference to public datasets rather than proprietary datasets; (2) develop more model-based prioritization methods; (3) conduct more studies on the comparison of prioritization methods; (4) always evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed technique with well-known evaluation metrics and compare the performance with the existing methods; (5) publish surveys and systematic review papers on test case prioritization; and (6) use datasets from industrial projects that represent real industrial problems.
  • Review
    Citation - WoS: 65
    Citation - Scopus: 80
    Software Test Maturity Assessment and Test Process Improvement: a Multivocal Literature Review
    (Elsevier, 2017) Garousi, Vahid; Felderer, Michael; Hacaloglu, Tuna
    Context: Software testing practices and processes in many companies are far from being mature and are usually conducted in ad-hoc fashions. Such immature practices lead to various negative outcomes, e.g., ineffectiveness of testing practices in detecting all the defects, and cost and schedule overruns of testing activities. To conduct test maturity assessment (TMA) and test process improvement (TPI) in a systematic manner, various TMA/TPI models and approaches have been proposed. Objective: It is important to identify the state-of-the-art and the-practice in this area to consolidate the list of all various test maturity models proposed by practitioners and researchers, the drivers of TMA/TPI, the associated challenges and the benefits and results of TMA/TPI. Our article aims to benefit the readers (both practitioners and researchers) by providing the most comprehensive survey of the area, to this date, in assessing and improving the maturity of test processes. Method: To achieve the above objective, we have performed a Multivocal Literature Review (MLR) study to find out what we know about TMA/TPI. A MLR is a form of a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) which includes the grey literature (e.g., blog posts and white papers) in addition to the published (formal) literature (e.g., journal and conference papers). We searched the academic literature using the Google Scholar and the grey literature using the regular Google search engine. Results: Our MLR and its results are based on 181 sources, 51 (29%) of which were grey literature and 130 (71%) were formally published sources. By summarizing what we know about TMA/TPI, our review identified 58 different test maturity models and a large number of sources with varying degrees of empirical evidence on this topic. We also conducted qualitative analysis (coding) to synthesize the drivers, challenges and benefits of TMA/TPI from the primary sources. Conclusion: We show that current maturity models and techniques in TMA/TPI provides reasonable advice for industry and the research community. We suggest directions for follow-up work, e.g., using the findings of this MLR in industry-academia collaborative projects and empirical evaluation of models and techniques in the area of TMA/TPI as reported in this article. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.