1,721,130 research outputs found
EMPIRICAL CHARACTERIZATION OF SOFTWARE QUALITY
Full text linkThe research topic focuses on the characterization of software quality considering the main software elements such as people, process and product. Many attributes (size, language, testing techniques etc.) probably could have an effect on the quality of software. In this thesis we aim to understand the impact of attributes of three P’s (people, product, process) on the quality of software by empirical means. Software quality can be interpreted in many ways, such as customer satisfaction, stability and defects etc. In this thesis we adopt ‘defect density’ as a quality measure. Therefore the research focus on the empirical evidences of the impact of attributes of the three P’s on the software defect density. For this reason empirical research methods (systematic literature reviews, case studies, and interviews) are utilized to collect empirical evidence. Each of this research method helps to extract the empirical evidences of the object under study and for data analysis statistical methods are used. Considering the product attributes, we have studied the size, language, development mode, age, complexity, module structure, module dependency, and module quality and their impact on project quality. Considering the process attributes, we have studied the process maturity and structure, and their impact on the project quality. Considering the people attributes, we have studied the experience and capability, and their impact on the project quality. Moreover, in the process category, we have studied the impact of one testing approach called ‘exploratory testing’ and its impact on the quality of software. Exploratory testing is a widely used software-testing practice and means simultaneous learning, test design, and test execution. We have analyzed the exploratory testing weaknesses, and proposed a hybrid testing approach in an attempt to improve the quality.
Concerning the product attributes, we found that there exist a significant difference of quality between open and close source projects, java and C projects, and large and small projects. Very small and defect free modules have impact on the software quality. Different complexity metrics have different impact on the software quality considering the size. Product complexity as defined in Table 53 has partial impact on the software quality. However software age and module dependencies are not factor to characterize the software quality.
Concerning the people attributes, we found that platform experience, application experience and language and tool experience have significant impact on the software quality. Regarding the capability we found that programmer capability has partial impact on the software quality where as analyst capability has no impact on the software quality.
Concerning process attributes we found that there is no difference of quality between the project developed under CMMI and those that are not developed under CMMI. Regarding the CMMI levels there is difference of software quality particularly between CMMI level 1 and CMMI level 3. Comparing different process types we found that hybrid projects are of better quality than waterfall projects. Process maturity defined by (SEI-CMM) has partial impact on the software quality. Concerning exploratory testing, we found that exploratory testing weaknesses induce the testing technical debt therefore a process is defined in conjunction with the scripted testing in an attempt to reduce the associated technical debt of exploratory testing.
The findings are useful for both researchers and practitioners to evaluate their project
Complexity Metrics Significance for Defects: An Empirical View
Full text linkSoftware Complexity often seems to be correlated with the defects and this makes difficult to select appropriate complexity metrics that would be effec-tive indicators of defects. The aim of this work is to analyze the relationship of different complexity metrics with the defects for three categories of software pro-jects i.e. large, medium and small. We analyzed 18 complexity metrics and defects from 27,734 software modules of 38 software projects categorized in large, me-dium and small. In all categories of projects we do not find any strong positive correlation between complexity metrics and defects. However we cluster the com-plexity metric values and defects in three categories as high, medium and low. Consequently we observe that for some complexity metrics high complexity re-sults in higher defects. We called these metrics as effective indicators of defects. In the small category of projects we found LCOM as effective indicator, in the medium category of project we found WMC, CBO, RFC, CA, CE, NPM, DAM, MOA, IC, Avg CC as effective indicators of defects and for a large category of projects we found WMC, CBO, RFC, CA, NPM, AMC, Avg CC as effective indi-cators of defects. The difference shows that complexity metrics relation to defects also varies with the size of projects
The Impact of Process Maturity on Defect Density
No full textContext: A common assumption in software engineering is that a more structured process delivers higher quality products. However, there are limited empirical studies that support this assumption. Objective: In this paper we analyze 61 projects looking for a relationship between process structuredness and quality of the product. The structuredness is considered under two dimensions: level of maturity (as measured by the CMMI assessment model) and type (e.g. TSP, RUP). The quality of the product is measured in terms of Defect Density (DD) defined as the number of delivered defects divided per size. Results: We found a small and statistically not significant difference of DD between the projects developed under CMMI and those that are not developed under CMMI. Considering the CMMI levels, the pair (CMMI 1, CMMI 3) is characterized by a statistically significant different DD. CMMI 1 exhibiting higher DD than CMMI 3. By comparing different software processes with each other we found that Hybrid process exhibits statistically significant lower DD than Waterfall. Conclusion: Software process in either dimension, level of maturity and type has an impact on the software quality but smaller than one might expec
Software Defect Density variants: a proposal
No full textDefect density (DD) is an important measure of software quality, but its usual definition (number of defects found divided by size in lines of code (loc)) is high level and may lead to different interpretations. The objective is to define concrete variants of Defect Density (standard DD, differential DD), analyze their trend over time on a number of projects, and understand which one is more suitable as an indicator of the quality of software projects. In the three projects analyzed the two variants of defect density have distinctly different trends over time; differential DD has a large variability, while standard DD has a steadily increasing trend. The conclusion is that both standard and differential DD are useful variants of DD, the standard DD providing a global quality view of a project (i.e. considering all the history) and the differential DD providing a local quality view (i.e. specific to one version). However, further studies are needed to investigate the usage of these variant
An Overview of Software Defect Density: A Scoping Study
No full textContext: Defects are an ineludible component of software, Defect Density (DD) - defined as number of defects divided by size - is often used as a related measure of quality. Project mangers and researchers alike would benefit a lot from overview DD figures from software projects, the former for decision making the latter for state-of-the-practice assessment. Objective: In this paper, we collect and aggregate DD figures published in literature, in addition we characterize DD as a function of different project factors in terms of central tendency and dispersion. The factors considered include development mode -open vs. closed source-, programming language, size, and age. Results: We were able to identify 19 papers reporting defect density figures concerning 109 software projects. The mean DD for the studied sample of projects is 7.47 post release defects per thousand lines of code (KLoC), the median is 4.3 with standard deviation of 7.99. Development mode, is characterized by statistically meaningful different DD, the same for Java vs. C. Besides, in the studied sample large projects exhibited lower DD than medium and small projects. Conclusion: The study is a first step in collecting and analyzing DD figures for the purpose of characterizing one important aspect of software quality. These figures can be used both by researchers and project managers interested to evaluate their projects. Further work is needed to extend the data set and to identify predictors of defect densit
Exploratory testing as a source of testing technical debt
No full textWe analyzed the software testing approach Exploratory Testing (ET) through a systematic review of literature to understand the consequences of ET as Technical debt. The evidence shows that ET is used as an alternative to any structured software testing approach to speed up the testing tasks and proved to be cost effective at the time of testing. Nevertheless ET also has many weaknesses that are not apparent at the time of testing but prompt up in later phases of system life cycle. Theses weaknesses incur increased rework and cost, and hence are considered to be the sources of TD. In addition we propose the possible solutions to embark upon these weaknesses that indeed help to reduce the testing technical debt of ET
Towards a hybrid testing process unifying exploratory testing and scripted testing
Full text linkCONTEXT Given the current state of the art in research, practitioners are faced with the challenge of choosing scripted testing (ST) or exploratory testing (ET). OBJECTIVE This study aims at systematically incorporating strengths of ET and ST in a hybrid testing process to overcome the weaknesses of each. METHOD We utilized systematic review and practitioner interviews to identify strengths and weaknesses of ET and ST. Strengths of ET were mapped to weaknesses of ST and vice versa. Noblit and Hare's lines-ofargument method was used for data analysis. The results of the mapping were used as input to codesign a hybrid process with experienced practitioners. RESULTS We found a clear need to create a hybrid process as follows: (i) both ST and ET provide strengths and weaknesses, and these depend on some particular conditions, which prevents preference of one approach to another; and (ii) the mapping showed that it is possible to address the weaknesses in one process by the strengths of the other in a hybrid form. With the input from literature and industry experts, a flexible and iterative hybrid process was designed. CONCLUSIONS Practitioners can clearly benefit from using a hybrid process given the mapping of advantages and disadvantage
Comparing a Hybrid Testing Process with Scripted and Exploratory Testing: An Experimental Study with Practitioners
Full text linkThis study presents an experimental study comparing the testing quality of a Hybrid Testing (HT) process with the commonly used approaches in industry: Scripted Testing (ST) and Exploratory Testing (ET). The study was conducted in an international IT service company in Sweden with the involvement of six experienced testers. Two measures were used for comparison: 1) defect detection eectiveness (DDE) and 2) functionality coverage (FC). The results indicated that HT performed better in terms of DDE than ST and worse than ET. In terms of FC, HT performed better than ET, while no signicant dierences were observed between the HT and ST. Furthermore, HT performed best for experienced testers, but worse with less experienced testers
GLOBAL WARMING CHALLENGES AND TACTICAL RAMIFICATIONS: ADDRESSING ECOLOGICAL SECURITY CONCERNS
Full text linkHumanity has been facing frequent trials in the contemporary era. One seriously emerging challenge is global warming. It has a record of disastrous impacts on earth that are severe and cataclysmic. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change attributes mega-disasters to global warming. These environmental calamities have raised serious concerns for leaders, scientists, environmentalists as well as public. The defence experts warn about gradually changing weather tendencies and emerging of new security challenges. Global warming is causing continuous fluctuations in our fragile ecosystem, and any persistent malfunctioning in the ecosystem would affect the politico-economic, strategic, and even very existence of humanity. It would require rational choices and new strategic approaches for saving humanity and numerous organism species under global warming impacts. Strategists, in the future, will inevitably explore looming tactical security concerns to safeguard defence capabilities. Against this backdrop, this paper argues that global warming will create severe strategic complications. In the coming decades, traditional national defence systems will have to undergo a new transformation supportive to cope with emerging cataclysmic security issues due to global warming. Therefore, innovative lines of tactical ecological rationale will become an essential part of national defence.
Bibliography Entry
Shah, Syed Muhammad Ali, Shaheen Akhtar, and Fozia Bibi. 2021. "Global Warming Challenges and Tactical Ramifications: Addressing Ecological Security Concerns." Margalla Papers 25 (1): 12-22
Four Important Iranian Iqbalists
No full textAllama Iqbal (1877...1938), as a poet of Persian, had passionate feelings about Iran and its literary heritage. In this article, the writer introduces four important Irani scholars who introduced Iqbal and his thought in Iran. These scholars are : Syed Muhammad Ali Larejani(1295-1371HS), Syed Muhmmad Muheet Tabatabai (1901-1992), Saeed Nafeesi (1895-1966), Dr. Syed Ghulam Reza Saeedi (1895-1988)
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