SummaryAutomated software testing is a critical enabler for modern software development, where rapid feedback on the product quality is expected. To make the testing work well, it is of high importance that impediments related to test automation are prevented and removed quickly. An enabling factor for all types of improvement is to understand the nature of what is to be improved. We have performed a systematic literature review of reported impediments related to software test automation to contribute to this understanding. In this paper, we present the results from the systematic literature review: The list of identified publications, a categorization of identified impediments, and a qualitative discussion of the impediments proposing a socio-technical system model of the use and implementation of test automation. 30% to 80% of the development costs are reported to be related to testing [2,3] . The high use of test automation also makes the automated tests mission critical: If the test automation stops working or slows down, the development will also stop or slow down.The investment cost for test automation can be significant. It is difficult to propose a generalizable cost model, due to a lack of published information available on the cost of ownership for test automation. However, the size and complexity of a test system can be in the order of, or often larger than, the complexity and size of the tested product [10,11][IP7] [12]. This makes it reasonable to conjecture that the cost of ownership of an automated test execution system is in the order of the cost of development of the product it is testing. Even if a lot less effort is spent on the test systems than on the sold products, it still represents a major investment for the software business as a whole. If the test automation does not perform as well as expected, this investment is unlikely to be recovered as planned, which may have significant consequences for the business. Further, it is reasonable to conjecture that test systems suffer from similar technical debt issues as regular systems do. Technical debt is a term that is used to describe the gap between the current state of the system and the ideal state of the system [13], usually in situations where a compromise is made during development to meet demands in one dimension, such as lead time, by sacrificing work in another dimension, such as architecture.
Abstract-Automated test execution is one of the more popular and available strategies to minimize the cost for software testing, and is also becoming one of the central concepts in modern software development as methods such as test-driven development gain popularity. Published studies on test automation indicate that the maintenance and development of test automation tools commonly encounter problems due to unforeseen issues. To further investigate this, we performed a case study on a telecommunication subsystem to seek factors that contribute to inefficiencies in use, maintenance, and development of the automated testing performed within the scope of responsibility of a software design team. A qualitative evaluation of the findings indicates that the main areas of improvement in this case are in the fields of interaction design and general software design principles, as applied to test execution system development.
The Architecture Analysis and Design Language (AADL) is used to represent architecture design decisions of safety-critical and real-time embedded systems. Due to the farreaching effects these decisions have on the development process, an architecture design fault is likely to have a significant deteriorating impact through the complete process. Automated fault avoidance of architecture design decisions therefore has the potential to significantly reduce the cost of the development while increasing the dependability of the end product. To provide means for automated fault avoidance when developing systems specified in AADL, a formal verification technique has been developed to ensure completeness and consistency of an AADL specification as well as its conformity with the end product. The approach requires the semantics of AADL to be formalized and implemented. We use the methodology of semantic anchoring to contribute with a formal and implemented semantics of a subset of AADL through a set of transformation rules to timed automata constructs. In addition, the verification technique, including the transformation rules, is validated using a case study of a safety-critical fuel-level system developed by a major vehicle manufacturer.
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