Empirical Software Engineering

, Volume 1, Issue 2, pp 165–188 | Cite as

Increasing testing productivity and software quality: A comparison of software testing methodologies within NASA

  • Donald W. Sova
  • Carol Smidts
Article

Abstract

Pressure to compress the development life cycle and reduce the duration and resources committed to testing lead to experimentation in testing at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Centerís Software Engineering Laboratory. This study investigates the trend to reduce developer testing and increasingly rely upon inspection techniques and independent functional testing to shorten the development life cycle, improve testing productivity, and improve software quality.

An approach is developed to conduct this comparison. In particular, the problem faced by software researchers, having a comprehensive characterization of software projects so similar types may be identified for comparative studies, is addressed using expert opinion.

Keywords

software testing independent functional testing improved testing productivity cleanroom complexity measures expert opinion characterization for comparison 
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Copyright information

© Kluwer Academic Publishers 1996

Authors and Affiliations

  • Donald W. Sova
    • 1
  • Carol Smidts
    • 2
  1. 1.NASA HeadquartersWashington, D.C.USA
  2. 2.University of MarylandCollege ParkUSA

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