PhD Proposal: Collaborative Testing Across Shared Software Components

Large component-based systems are often built from many of the same components. As individual component-based software systems are developed, tested and maintained, these shared components are repeatedly manipulated. As a result there are often significant overlaps and synergies across and among the different testing efforts of different component-based systems.
However, in practice, testers of different systems rarely collaborate, taking a test-all-by-yourself approach. As a result, redundant effort is spent testing common components, and important information that could be used to improve testing quality is lost.
The goal of this research is to demonstrate that, if done right, testers of shared software components can save effort by avoiding redundant work, and can improve the test effectiveness for each component as well as for each component-based software systems by using information obtained when testing across multiple components.
To achieve this goal I propose to develop collaborative testing techniques and tools for developers and testers of component-based systems with shared components, to apply them to subject systems, and to evaluate their costs and effectiveness.
The proposed research is organized in three parts. First, I will investigate current testing practices for component-based software systems to find the testing overlap and synergy we conjecture exists. Second, I will design and implement infrastructure and related tools to facilitate communication and data sharing between testers. Third, I will design multiple testing processes to implement different collaborative testing algorithms and apply them to large actively developed software systems.
Examining Committee:

Committee Chair: - Dr. Alan Sussman
Dept’s. Rep: - Dr. Amol Deshpande
Committee Members: - Dr. Atif Memon
- Dr. Adam Porter