Whitepapers
IV&V Australia's consultants have written or contributed to a number of articles and white papers on a range of testing-related topics:
Is It A Bug? Lessons from Developing Safety-Critical Software
Software Testing – A Project Manager’s Secret Weapon
This Is Only a Test
A Discipline Finding its Identity
Who Should Do What?
Clearing the Testing Minefield
Surviving Testing Risks - A practitioner's guide
What Happens When You Don't Have a Test Plan
Software Unit Testing
Clearing the Testing Minefield
Surviving Testing Risks - A practitioner's guide
What Happens When You Don't Have a Test Plan
Software Unit Testing
Is It A Bug? Lessons from Developing Safety-Critical Software
Developers working with safety-critical software have long known that "reliable operation to specification" is not a guarantee of safety. The safety-critical systems literature identifies at least three other sources of unsafe behaviour - operator error, inherently unsafe specifications, and operation outside intended conditions.This presentation discussed experiences with developing safety-critical software, and explores how the thinking behind these other classes of failure can be applied to a range of different application areas (eg, security, compatibility). It discusses techniques that testers can use to apply the lessons learned in safety critical software to finding these classes of defects that may exist “outside of the specification”, and to provide a framework for managing these vulnerabilities.
Software Testing – A Project Manager’s Secret Weapon
SoftwareTesting is a discipline that is starting to “come of age” within the software development community. More and more organisations are realising the importance of independent testing and the contribution it makes to the delivery of a quality product. This presentation discusses how a savvy Project Manager can use testing, and the visibility and control that testing activities can bring, to their best advantage in running a successful development project.This Is Only a Test
Dan Tebbutt explores the business case for software testing with a cross section of industry experts. One of them was IV&V Australia's CEO Donna O'Neill.A Discipline Finding its Identity
Software companies can no longer afford to develop and test their systems on an ad-hoc basis. Without a defined testing strategy, companies will be left behind in the increasingly sophisticated world of software development.Who Should Do What?
On many projects the division of testing responsibility between developers and independent testers is not well understood. This can lead to gaps in test coverage, as well as strained relationships between the two groups. In our consulting work, we find that this conflict is almost always caused by a lack of a clear understanding of the respective roles and responsibilities of these two groups.This paper discusses some of the causes of the conflict, presents a simple framework for defining the different team roles, and provides some practical methods for defining “who should do what”.
Clearing the Testing Minefield
We never have enough time to do adequate testing; we rarely have clear requirements on which to base our tests; we battle for our own test environment, and we beg for robust software that works well enough for us to do meaningful testing. The list goes on. Our challenge is to ease our way through this minefield, so that we can maximise the time we spend adding value to the project, and reduce the time we spend responding to non-productive diversions.This paper will provide some strategies for meeting this challenge and achieving real value-added testing.