The Role of Testing in Agile and Conventional Methodologies

Agustin Yagüe, Juan Garbajosa

2009

Abstract

Testing in software engineering is a well established practice. Though the scope of testing may differ depending on the community, e.g. for some communities is a process in itself while for some other communities is a an activity or a task under verification and validation, many fundamental issues around testing are shared by all the communities. However, agile methodologies are emerging in the software engineering landscape and are changing the picture. For instance, in agile methodologies it may happen that code is written precisely to pass a test. Moreover, tests may replace the requirement specification. Therefore the concepts underlying test practice are different in conventional and agile approaches. This paper analyses these two different perspectives for testing, the conventional and the agile, and discusses some of the implications that these two different approaches may have in software engineering.

References

  1. Abran, A., Moore, J.W., Bourque, P., Dupuis, R., Tripp, L.L.: Guide to the Software Engineering Body of Knowledge (SWEBOK). IEEE (2004)
  2. Koomen, T., van der Aalst, L., Broekman, B., Vroon, M.: TMap Next, for result-driven testing. UTN Publishers (2006)
  3. ISO: ISO/IEC 12207. Software Engineering - Life Cycle Processes. ISO (2008)
  4. ISO: Systems Engineering - System Life Cycle Processes. ISO (2008)
  5. IEEE: IEEE Std 1008-. Standard for Software Unit Testing. IEEE, pub-IEEE-STD:adr (2002)
  6. BSI: Software testing. Software component testing. BSI (1998)
  7. European Consortium for Space Standardisation, E.: Software - part 1: Principles and requirements. E-40 (2003)
  8. Boehm, B.: A view of 20th and 21st century software engineering. In: ICSE 7806: Proceedings of the 28th international conference on Software engineering, New York, NY, USA, ACM (2006) 12-29
  9. Beck, K., Beedle, M., van Bennekum, A., Cockburn, A., Cunningham, W., Fowler, M., Grenning, J., Highsmith, J., Hunt, A., Jeffries, R., Kern, J., Marick, B., Martin, R.C., Mellor, S., Schwaber, K., Sutherland, J., Thomas, D.: Manifesto for agile software development (2001)
  10. Shore, J., Warden, S.: The Art of Agile Development. O'Reilly Media, Inc. (2007)
  11. Beck, K.: Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change, Second Edition. Addison Wesley Professional (2004)
  12. Royce, W.W.: Managing the development of large software systems: concepts and techniques. In: ICSE 7887: Proceedings of the 9th international conference on Software Engineering, Los Alamitos, CA, USA, IEEE Computer Society Press (1987) 328-338
  13. the: The V-Model. http://www.v-modell-xt.de (2005)
  14. Janzen, D., Saiedian, H.: Test-driven development: Concepts, taxonomy, and future direction. Computer, 38 (2005) 43-50
  15. Fraser, S., Astels, D., Beck, K., Boehm, B., McGregor, J., Newkirk, J., Poole, C.: Discipline and practices of tdd: (test driven development). In: OOPSLA 7803: Companion of the 18th annual ACM SIGPLAN conference on Object-oriented programming, systems, languages, and applications, New York, NY, USA, ACM Press (2003) 268-270
  16. Koskela, L.: Test Driven: TDD and Acceptance TDD for Java Developers. Manning Publications (2007)
  17. Sauve;, J.P., Neto, O.L.A., Cirne, W.: Easyaccept: a tool to easily create, run and drive development with automated acceptance tests. In: AST 7806: Proceedings of the 2006 international workshop on Automation of software test, New York, NY, USA, ACM Press (2006) 111-117
  18. Cunningham & Cunningham, I.: Fit: Framework for integrated test. (web)
  19. Vilki, K.: Juggling with the paradoxes of agile transformation. Flexi Newsletter, 2 (2008) 3-5
  20. Cao, L., Ramesh, B.: Agile requirements engineering practices: An empirical study. Software, IEEE, 25 (2008) 60-67
  21. Boehm, B.W., Turner, R.: Balancing agility and discipline: Evaluating and integrating agile and plan-driven methods. In: ICSE, IEEE Computer Society (2004)
  22. Boehm, B.W., Turner, R.: Management challenges to implementing agile processes in traditional development organizations. IEEE Software, 22 (2005) 30-39
  23. Larman, C., Basili, V.R.: Iterative and incremental development: A brief history. Computer, 36 (2003) 47-56
  24. Paetsch, F., Eberlein, A., Maurer, F.: Requirements engineering and agile software development. In: WETICE 7803: Proceedings of the Twelfth International Workshop on Enabling Technologies, Washington, DC, USA, IEEE Computer Society (2003)
  25. Sillitti, A., Ceschi, M., Russo, B., Succi, G.: Managing uncertainty in requirements: A survey in documentation-driven and agile companies. In: METRICS 7805: Proceedings of the 11th IEEE International Software Metrics Symposium, Washington, DC, USA, IEEE Computer Society (2005) 17
  26. Miler, R.: Managing Software or Growth without fear, control, and the manufacturing mindset. Addison-Wesley Professional (2003)
  27. Boehm, B.W.: Software Engineering Economics (Prentice-Hall Advances in Computing Science & Technology Series). Prentice Hall PTR (1981)
  28. Dyba, T., Dingsoyr, T.: Empirical studies of agile software development: A systematic review. Information and Software Technology, 50 (2008) 833-859
  29. Nuseibeh, B., Easterbrook, S.: Requirements engineering: a roadmap. In: ICSE 7800: Proceedings of the Conference on The Future of Software Engineering, New York, NY, USA, ACM Press (2000) 35-46
  30. Ceschi, M., Sillitti, A., Succi, G., De Panfilis, S.: Project management in plan-based and agile companies. Software, IEEE, 22 (2005) 21-27
  31. Schwaber, K.: Agile Project Management With Scrum. Microsoft Press, Redmond, WA, USA (2004)
  32. Mann, C., Maurer, F.: A case study on the impact of scrum on overtime and customer satisfaction. In: ADC 7805: Proceedings of the Agile Development Conference, Washington, DC, USA, IEEE Computer Society (2005) 70-79
  33. Capiluppi, A., Fernandez-Ramil, J., Higman, J., Sharp, H.C., Smith, N.: An empirical study of the evolution of an agile-developed software system. In: ICSE 7807: Proceedings of the 29th international conference on Software Engineering, Washington, DC, USA, IEEE Computer Society (2007) 511-518
  34. Nerur, S., Mahapatra, R., Mangalaraj, G.: Challenges of migrating to agile methodologies. Commun. ACM, 48 (2005) 72-78
  35. Baker, S.W., Thomas, J.C.: Agile principles as a leadership value system: How agile memes survive and thrive in a corporate it culture. In: AGILE 7807: Proceedings of the AGILE 2007, Washington, DC, USA, IEEE Computer Society (2007) 415-420
  36. Ricca, F., Torchiano, M., Penta, M.D., Ceccato, M., Tonella, P.: Using acceptance tests as a support for clarifying requirements: A series of experiments. Information and Software Technology, 51 (2009) 270 - 283
  37. Park, S.S., Maurer, F.: The benefits and challenges of executable acceptance testing. In: APOS 7808: Proceedings of the 2008 international workshop on Scrutinizing agile practices or shoot-out at the agile corral, New York, NY, USA, ACM (2008)
  38. Feather, M.S., Smith, B.: Automatic generation of test oracles from pilot studies to application. Automated Software Engg., 8 (2001) 31-61
  39. Ho, C.W., Johnson, M., Williams, L., Maximilien, E.: On agile performance requirements specification and testing. Agile Conference, 2006 (2006) 6 pp.-52
  40. Kim, S., Park, S., Yun, J., Lee, Y.: Automated continuous integration of component-based software: An industrial experience. (2008) 423-426
Download


Paper Citation


in Harvard Style

Yagüe A. and Garbajosa J. (2009). The Role of Testing in Agile and Conventional Methodologies . In Proceedings of the 7th International Workshop on Modelling, Simulation, Verification and Validation of Enterprise Information Systems - Volume 1: MSVVEIS, (ICEIS 2009) ISBN 978-989-8111-90-6, pages 93-100. DOI: 10.5220/0002205100930100


in Bibtex Style

@conference{msvveis09,
author={Agustin Yagüe and Juan Garbajosa},
title={The Role of Testing in Agile and Conventional Methodologies},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 7th International Workshop on Modelling, Simulation, Verification and Validation of Enterprise Information Systems - Volume 1: MSVVEIS, (ICEIS 2009)},
year={2009},
pages={93-100},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0002205100930100},
isbn={978-989-8111-90-6},
}


in EndNote Style

TY - CONF
JO - Proceedings of the 7th International Workshop on Modelling, Simulation, Verification and Validation of Enterprise Information Systems - Volume 1: MSVVEIS, (ICEIS 2009)
TI - The Role of Testing in Agile and Conventional Methodologies
SN - 978-989-8111-90-6
AU - Yagüe A.
AU - Garbajosa J.
PY - 2009
SP - 93
EP - 100
DO - 10.5220/0002205100930100