Best Practices for the Organizational Implementation of Software Testing

Software testing as a main part of the development process is essential for the successful production of highest quality software. We have cooperated with regional companies in order to capture their problems with software development and to learn their distinct best practices in software testing. Based on our observations we created a framework to categorize recommendations for testing. In this paper we present the research methodology used and the framework built. We further illustrate four major recommendations considering the organizational implementation and strategic alignment of testing. They are derived from the analysis of the companies' status quo and best practices. Each recommendation is classified using the framework to show the conditions its application depends on.

1. Introduction

With the advent of the software crisis in the 1960s [9], software quality finally gained a wide recognition. Spectacular disasters like the crash of Ariane 5 [2], [21] were noticed by the general public. Reports on extensive projects that are not only delayed, but exceed the allowed budget by far due to software problems can be found in the media regularly. In Germany e.g. the road charge-project “Toll Collect” or the currently introduced electronic health insurance card (“Elek-tronische Gesundheitskarte”) have been subject to lively public and political discussion. Unfortunately, evidence of failing software projects can be found widely [8].