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When changes are performed on an automated production system (aPS), new faults can be accidentally introduced into the system, which are called regressions. A common method for finding these faults is regression testing. In most cases, this regression testing process is performed under high time pressure and onsite in a very uncomfortable environment. Until now, there has been no automated support for finding and prioritizing system test cases regarding the fully integrated aPS that are suitable for finding regressions. Thus, the testing technician has to rely on personal intuition and experience, possibly choosing an inappropriate order of test cases, finding regressions at a very late stage of the test run. Using a suitable prioritization, this iterative process of finding and fixing regressions can be streamlined and a lot of time can be saved by executing test cases likely to identify new regressions earlier. Thus, an approach is presented in this paper that uses previously acquired runtime data from past test executions and performs a change identification and impact analysis to prioritize test cases that have a high probability to unveil regressions caused by side effects of a system change. The approach was developed in cooperation with reputable industrial partners active in the field of aPS engineering, ensuring a development in line with industrial requirements. An industrial case study and an expert evaluation were performed, showing promising results. Note to Practitioners—Currently, prioritizing relevant system tests to be executed in case of changes to an automated production system (aPS) is very challenging and depends largely on the intuition and experience of the testing technician. As system tests involve manual operations, testing requires substantial effort. In addition, testing is mostly performed under severe time pressure and in an uncomfortable environment such as onsite at the customer’s premises. In this paper, an approach is presented that supports the testing technician in finding and prioritizing available test cases based on previous test executions and change analysis. For practitioners, this approach could streamline regression testing and increase the code quality of aPSs significantly, in particular, for fully integrated aPSs, which have not been the focus of other research so far. As the approach was developed in line with industrial requirements, relevance, and adaptability for industrial use are ensured. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: This document describes the implementation of an automated document-generation process for the creation of software-quality reports compliant with the European Cooperation for Space Standardization (ECSS) standards. Research statement: We propose a solution for the generation of technical documents that collect and aggregate data from different sources. In addition, we analyze the feasibility of building a solution that supports engineers in the generation of these complex artifacts. Situating the case: The structure and content of Software Product Assurance Milestone Reports and Software Verification Reports are defined in ECSS-Q-ST-80C and ECSS-M-ST-40C. Companies developing software for the European Space Agency must prepare these reports to detail development activities and the subsequent quality of software products. These reports incorporate data generated from different activities and managed with different software engineering tools. Case study: The automation techniques described in this paper were designed to create complex documents (quality and verification reports) based on the use of XML for data exchange and integration, and a set of connectors to collect software engineering data generated using different applications for requirements management, architectural design, testing, etc. Conclusions: The feasibility of the proposed solution was validated by applying it to two projects in the aerospace industry. The conclusion demonstrates that the automatic generation of complex documents from multiple sources of data is economically feasible and may produce benefits, including time to delivery and a significant reduction of production costs, by using existing XML-related technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The research is devoted to the development of the formalized and ontological models of the software quality according to ISO 25010. These models provide the possibility of the formalization of the software quality assessment according to ISO 25010. This standard would benefit from a formal description. The paper proves that information sufficiency is a critical aspect of software quality assessment. The methods and system of evaluating the sufficiency of the information for software quality assessment according to ISO 25010 are developed. The developed methods and tools provide the increasing the veracity of software quality assessment. The conducted experiments confirm that the developed methodology of evaluating the sufficiency of information for software quality assessment increased the veracity of the software quality assessment in 12% for the automated system for large-format photo print. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A panel of seven experts discuss the past 40 years of software metrics, with a focus on evidence-based methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The importance of quality assurance in the software development process cannot be overemphasized because its adoption results in high reliability and easy maintenance of the software system and other software products. Software quality assurance includes different activities such as quality control, quality management, quality standards, quality planning, process standardization and improvement amongst others. The aim of this work is to further investigate the software quality assurance practices of practitioners in Nigeria. While our previous work covered areas on quality planning, adherence to standardized processes and the inherent challenges, this work has been extended to include quality control, software process improvement and international quality standard organization membership. It also makes comparison based on a similar study carried out in Turkey. The goal is to generate more robust findings that can properly support decision making by the software community. The qualitative research approach, specifically, the use of questionnaire research instruments was applied to acquire data from software practitioners. Results: In addition to the previous results, it was observed that quality assurance practices are quite neglected and this can be the cause of low patronage. Moreover, software practitioners are neither aware of international standards organizations or the required process improvement techniques; as such their claimed standards are not aligned to those of accredited bodies, and are only limited to their local experience and knowledge, which makes it questionable. The comparison with Turkey also yielded similar findings, making the results typical of developing countries. The research instrument used was tested for internal consistency using the Cronbach's alpha, and it was proved reliable. Conclusion: For the software industry in developing countries to grow strong and be a viable source of external revenue, software assurance practices have to be taken seriously because its effect is evident in the final product. Moreover, quality frameworks and tools which require minimum time and cost are highly needed in these countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the increasing importance of software in the aerospace field, as evidenced by its growing size and complexity, a rigorous and reliable software verification and validation process must be applied to ensure conformance with the strict requirements of this software. Although important, traditional validation activities such as testing and simulation can only provide a partial verification of behavior in critical real-time software systems, and thus, formal verification is an alternative to complement these activities. Two useful formal software verification approaches are deductive verification and abstract interpretation, which analyze programs statically to identify defects. This paper explores abstract interpretation and deductive verification by employing Frama-C’s value analysis and Jessie plug-ins to verify embedded aerospace control software. The results indicate that both approaches can be employed in a software verification process to make software more reliable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Software failures are still a major concern in mission- and enterprise-critical contexts, despite significant efforts spent in software testing. In fact, while software testing is effective against easily-reproducible bugs (Bohrbugs), it is considerably less suitable for dealing with bugs that lead to hard-to-reproduce failures (Mandelbugs). On the positive side, the elusive nature of Mandelbugs provides opportunities for failure recovery, which are investigated in this paper. Based on real cases of Mandelbugs in eleven Information Technology (IT) systems running in production, the paper proposes a model that describes the recovery processes in IT systems. It then presents closed-form expressions, and a numerical analysis, of the mean time to recovery, and the software (un)availability. This analysis allows the designer to compare recovery strategies, as well as to determine the parameters having a high influence on the efficacy of recovery from failures caused by Mandelbugs. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Mobile-app quality is becoming an increasingly important issue. These apps are generally delivered through app stores that let users post reviews. These reviews provide a rich data source you can leverage to understand user-reported issues. Researchers qualitatively studied 6,390 low-rated user reviews for 20 free-to-download iOS apps. They uncovered 12 types of user complaints. The most frequent complaints were functional errors, feature requests, and app crashes. Complaints about privacy and ethical issues and hidden app costs most negatively affected ratings. In 11 percent of the reviews, users attributed their complaints to a recent app update. This study provides insight into the user-reported issues of iOS apps, along with their frequency and impact, which can help developers better prioritize their limited quality assurance resources. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Design by contract (DbC) is a software development methodology that focuses on clearly defining the interfaces between components to produce better quality object-oriented software. Though there exists ample support for DbC for sequential programs, applying DbC to concurrent programs presents several challenges. Using Java as the target programming language, we tackle such challenges by augmenting the Java Modelling Language (JML) and modifying the JML compiler (jmlc) to generate runtime assertion checking code to support DbC in concurrent programs. We applied our solution in a carefully designed case study on a highly concurrent industrial software system from the telecommunications domain to assess the effectiveness of contracts as test oracles in detecting and diagnosing functional faults in concurrent software. Based on these results, clear and objective requirements are defined for contracts to be effective test oracles for concurrent programs whilst balancing the effort to design them. Effort is measured indirectly through the contract complexity measure (CCM), a measure we define. Main results include that contracts of a realistic level of completeness and complexity can detect around 76 percent of faults and reduce the diagnosis effort for such faults tenfold. We, therefore, show that DbC can be applied to concurrent software and can be a valuable tool to improve the economics of software engineering. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The purpose of this article is to showcase a research project (Quality Model for Software Development Pymes Located in the Aburrá Valley Metropolitan Area), and to present the resulting Quality Model, intended to support PYMES that develop software and are located in the Aburrá Valley Metropolitan Area. Many important models were analyzed for its development, such as MoProSoft, TST/PSP, Mosca, CMI, CMMI, from which the best practices were extracted. Additionally, important concepts were taken into account, such as Quality Models, Process Management, Development Processes, and Project Management. This quality model aims serve as a basis for small companies by supporting their software development teams, improving their performance and effectiveness in project elaboration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This special issue, owing to its fundamental software quality focus, comprises a collection of diverse articles that address the challenges and directions for software quality research. The Web extra at http://youtu.be/T7V4RSr1KEE is an audio interview in which Davide Falessi speaks with guest editors Annie Kuntzmann-Combelles, Michael Felderer, and Ruth Breu about methods for improving software quality management, testing, and security on intelligent and interconnected devices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Architecture evaluation is an important activity in the software engineering life cycle that ensures that the architecture satisfies stakeholders' expectations. Additionally, risks and issues can be uncovered before they cause tremendous costs later in the life cycle. Unfortunately, architecture evaluation isn't regularly practiced in industry. This article presents DCAR (decision-centric architecture review), an architecture evaluation method that uses architecture decisions as first-class entities. DCAR uncovers and evaluates the rationale behind the most important architecture decisions, considering the entire context in which the decisions were made. Furthermore, it's lightweight and can be performed during or after the design is finalized. Experiences in large industrial projects have shown that full-scale DCAR evaluations, including reporting, can be conducted in fewer than five person-days, while producing satisfying results for the stakeholders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

IEEE Software editor-in-chief Forrest Shull discusses the software sustainability and his interview with Girish Seshagiri, the CEO of AIS, an organization that offers "firm fixed-price contracting with performance guarantees, including a lifetime warranty on software defects" in government contracts. In addition, he discusses the best paper award at the 21st Annual IEEE International Requirements Engineering Conference and the best research paper award at the Agile Conference. The first Web extra at http://youtu.be/L1XN0R4koRk is an audio interview highlighting IEEE Software editor in chief Forrest Shull's discussion with Girish Seshagiri, the CEO of AIS, about the organization's philosophy of offering "firm fixed-price contracting with performance guarantees, including a lifetime warranty on software defects" in government contracts. The second Web extra at http://youtu.be/iFsZlrhSM9E is the complete audio interview in which IEEE Software editor in chief Forrest Shull's speaks with Girish Seshagiri, the CEO of AIS, about the organization's philosophy of offering "firm fixed-price contracting with performance guarantees, including a lifetime warranty on software defects" in government contracts. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study employs the data-envelopment analysis (DEA)-Tobit regression approach to analyze data from a leading software engineering organization to gain insights regarding the role of various types of technical experience and task factors in the efficiency of personnel assigned to software tasks. “Efficiency” follows a holistic-view definition as the quality and productivity achieved from the overall personnel experience, and it is evaluated with DEA. Then, a Tobit regression model is employed to determine the effect that various types of technical experience and task factors have on the DEA efficiency scores. Although the DEA–Tobit technique has been applied to various areas within the management science and operations research fields, it has not yet been presented as a general evaluation tool within the software-engineering field to understand drivers of software quality and productivity. We demonstrate how DEA–Tobit fills a gap not addressed by commonly applied methods in the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study develops and empirically tests the idea that the impact of structural complexity on perfective maintenance of object-oriented software is significantly determined by the team strategy of programmers (independent or collaborative). We analyzed two key dimensions of software structure, coupling and cohesion, with respect to the maintenance effort and the perceived ease-of-maintenance by pairs of programmers. Hypotheses based on the distributed cognition and task interdependence theoretical frameworks were tested using data collected from a controlled lab experiment employing professional programmers. The results show a significant interaction effect between coupling, cohesion, and programmer team strategy on both maintenance effort and perceived ease-of-maintenance. Highly cohesive and low-coupled programs required lower maintenance effort and were perceived to be easier to maintain than the low-cohesive programs and high-coupled programs. Further, our results would predict that managers who strategically allocate maintenance tasks to either independent or collaborative programming teams depending on the structural complexity of software could lower their team's maintenance effort by as much as 70 percent over managers who use simple uniform resource allocation policies. These results highlight the importance of achieving congruence between team strategies employed by collaborating programmers and the structural complexity of software. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The quality characteristics of metrological software are required by national or regional legislation, e.g., in legal metrology, or for safety critical applications, or by various standards such as software product quality standards (ISO/IEC 91261) or laboratory competence standards (ISO/IEC 170252). The parties involved are interested in getting a clear guidance for software quality requirements and validation methods. In already developed guidance documents different software quality issues, software lifecycle phases and consequences of risk evaluation for software malfunction or fraud are addressed to different extents. This paper provides a comparison of approaches with the aim to support the parties involved in understanding both the common points and the differences. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]