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Article Citation - WoS: 16What We Know About Software Test Maturity and Test Process Improvement(Ieee Computer Soc, 2018) Garousi, Vahid; Felderer, Michael; Hacaloglu, Tuna[No Abstract Available]Review Citation - WoS: 145Citation - Scopus: 189Challenges and Best Practices in Industry-Academia Collaborations in Software Engineering: a Systematic Literature Review(Elsevier, 2016) Garousi, Vahid; Petersen, Kai; Ozkan, BarisContext: The global software industry and the software engineering (SE) academia are two large communities. However, unfortunately, the level of joint industry-academia collaborations in SE is still relatively very low, compared to the amount of activity in each of the two communities. It seems that the two 'camps' show only limited interest/motivation to collaborate with one other. Many researchers and practitioners have written about the challenges, success patterns (what to do, i.e., how to collaborate) and anti-patterns (what not do do) for industry-academia collaborations. Objective: To identify (a) the challenges to avoid risks to the collaboration by being aware of the challenges, (b) the best practices to provide an inventory of practices (patterns) allowing for an informed choice of practices to use when planning and conducting collaborative projects. Method: A systematic review has been conducted. Synthesis has been done using grounded-theory based coding procedures. Results: Through thematic analysis we identified 10 challenge themes and 17 best practice themes. A key outcome was the inventory of best practices, the most common ones recommended in different contexts were to hold regular workshops and seminars with industry, assure continuous learning from industry and academic sides, ensure management engagement, the need for a champion, basing research on real world problems, showing explicit benefits to the industry partner, be agile during the collaboration, and the co-location of the researcher on the industry side. Conclusion: Given the importance of industry-academia collaboration to conduct research of high practical relevance we provide a synthesis of challenges and best practices, which can be used by researchers and practitioners to make informed decisions on how to structure their collaborations. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Review Citation - WoS: 59Citation - Scopus: 78Web Application Testing: a Systematic Literature Review(Elsevier Science inc, 2014) Dogan, Serdar; Betin-Can, Aysu; Garousi, VahidContext: The web has had a significant impact on all aspects of our society. As our society relies more and more on the web, the dependability of web applications has become increasingly important. To make these applications more dependable, for the past decade researchers have proposed various techniques for testing web-based software applications. Our literature search for related studies retrieved 193 papers in the area of web application testing, which have appeared between 2000 and 2013. Objective: As this research area matures and the number of related papers increases, it is important to systematically identify, analyze, and classify the publications and provide an overview of the trends and empirical evidence in this specialized field. Methods: We systematically review the body of knowledge related to functional testing of web application through a systematic literature review (SLR) study. This SLR is a follow-up and complimentary study to a recent systematic mapping (SM) study that we conducted in this area. As part of this study, we pose three sets of research questions, define selection and exclusion criteria, and synthesize the empirical evidence in this area. Results: Our pool of studies includes a set of 95 papers (from the 193 retrieved papers) published in the area of web application testing between 2000 and 2013. The data extracted during our SLR study is available through a publicly-accessible online repository. Among our results are the followings: (1) the list of test tools in this area and their capabilities, (2) the types of test models and fault models proposed in this domain, (3) the way the empirical studies in this area have been designed and reported, and (4) the state of empirical evidence and industrial relevance. Conclusion: We discuss the emerging trends in web application testing, and discuss the implications for researchers and practitioners in this area. The results of our SLR can help researchers to obtain an overview of existing web application testing approaches, fault models, tools, metrics and empirical evidence, and subsequently identify areas in the field that require more attention from the research community. (C) 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Review Citation - WoS: 65Citation - Scopus: 80Software Test Maturity Assessment and Test Process Improvement: a Multivocal Literature Review(Elsevier, 2017) Garousi, Vahid; Felderer, Michael; Hacaloglu, TunaContext: 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.Article Citation - WoS: 114Citation - Scopus: 143Smells in Software Test Code: a Survey of Knowledge in Industry and Academia(Elsevier Science inc, 2018) Garousi, Vahid; Kucuk, BarisAs a type of anti-pattern, test smells are defined as poorly designed tests and their presence may negatively affect the quality of test suites and production code. Test smells are the subject of active discussions among practitioners and researchers, and various guidelines to handle smells are constantly offered for smell prevention, smell detection, and smell correction. Since there is a vast grey literature as well as a large body of research studies in this domain, it is not practical for practitioners and researchers to locate and synthesize such a large literature. Motivated by the above need and to find out what we, as the community, know about smells in test code, we conducted a 'multivocal' literature mapping (classification) on both the scientific literature and also practitioners' grey literature. By surveying all the sources on test smells in both industry (120 sources) and academia (46 sources), 166 sources in total, our review presents the largest catalogue of test smells, along with the summary of guidelines/techniques and the tools to deal with those smells. This article aims to benefit the readers (both practitioners and researchers) by serving as an "index" to the vast body of knowledge in this important area, and by helping them develop high-quality test scripts, and minimize occurrences of test smells and their negative consequences in large test automation projects. (C) 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Article Citation - WoS: 8Citation - Scopus: 15Cross-Factor Analysis of Software Engineering Practices Versus Practitioner Demographics: an Exploratory Study in Turkey(Elsevier Science inc, 2016) Garousi, Vahid; Coskuncay, Ahmet; Demirors, Onur; Yazici, AliContext: Understanding the types of software engineering practices and techniques used in the industry is important. There is a wide spectrum in terms of the types and maturity of software engineering practices conducted in each software team and company. Furthermore, it is important to understand the cross-factor relationship of software engineering practices and practitioner demographics including their companies and projects, e.g., is it the case that practitioners developing software for sectors such as military would utilize software size measurement approaches more, or use different software development methodologies, compared to practitioners developing software for other sectors?, and what kinds of practices are conducted by practitioners in small versus large companies? Objective: Our objective is to get an understanding into the cross-factor correlation of various software engineering practices versus practitioner demographics including their companies and projects (e.g., target industry, size and work experience). Such an understanding will enable us to identify patterns and pinpoint special issues which should be studied and addressed in the context of each specific demographic (e.g., small versus large companies). Thus, we decided to conduct an exploratory study in this area and collected real industrial data in the context of Turkey which has a vibrant software industry. Method: To achieve the above objective, we use the data from a recent Turkish-wide survey of software engineering practices which was systematically designed with 46 questions based on our past experience in the Canadian context and using the Software Engineering Body of Knowledge (SWEBOK). 202 practicing software engineers participated in the survey. We raise a set of 12 research questions about the cross-factor correlation of software engineering practices and practitioner demographics, and address them using statistical analysis. Results: The exploratory study results reveal important and interesting findings about cross-factor relationship of software engineering practices and practitioner demographics. Among some of the most interesting findings are the followings: (1) By analyzing the trends, we were first surprised to see that as a practitioner gets more years of work experience, against what one would expect, s/he experiences more challenges in Software Development Life-Cycle (SDLC) phases and SE tasks; (2) Almost 55% of participants measure software size; (3) Agile/lean development is used the least (16%) by the participants working in the companies serving the military and defense sector; (4) Usage of waterfall is low among participants employed by small sized companies whereas Agile/lean development is relatively popular among this class of participants; and (5) As company size increases, usage of spiral development slightly increases, whereas usage of extreme programming practices decreases. Conclusion: The results of this exploratory study will be useful to software engineering professionals and researchers both in Turkey and world-wide by revealing the cross-factor relationship of software engineering practices versus practitioner demographics. The study raises several new research directions, e.g., (1) Why are not many practitioners using any size nor project estimation metrics and how these fundamental engineering approaches could be utilized more frequently?, (2) What are the best practices, success stories and challenging experiences in using SE tools?, and (3) Why is Agile lean development is not popular in the military and defense sector and how these approaches could be utilized more frequently. (C) 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
