TestCheck: uma abordagem baseada em Checklist para inspecionar artefatos de teste de software

Abstract

The quality of testing applied to a software project is an important factor to reach the quality of the final product. This becomes more evident in methodologies based on testing to measure the software development progress or that consider testing the central element in the evaluation of its quality. Several strategies can be applied to evaluate the quality of testing in a software project. A possible strategy is to ensure the quality of artifacts produced during testing process. In this context, a technique that has been largely used to ensure the quality of software artifacts is inspection. There are many works dealing with inspection of documents produced during the software development process. However, we have not identified in the technical literature works that apply inspection in software testing artifacts. We identified just studies indicating the importance of applying inspection in these artifacts. Thus, with the purpose of evaluating the quality of testing artifacts, contributing to defects detection before tests execution, this thesis presents a checklist-based approach, TestCheck, for inspection of software testing artifacts (test plans, cases, and procedures). In order to evaluate the proposed approach, experimental studies (feasibility, observation and case studies) were conducted. They analyzed and indicated the efficacy, efficiency, and maturity of the proposed approach in relation to detection of defects in testing artifacts.