QA&TEST Research & Analysis Centre
QA&TEST has just recently inaugurated a brand new QA&TEST Research & Analysis Centre, by carrying out a first research study about “Challenges and Opportunities of the Embedded Software Quality and Testing”.
The objective of this first study was to identify the principal areas of interest for the software industry in the field of testing and quality. This study was intended as a starting point, to analyse the state of the industry and the challenges and opportunities that will be faced in the future, as well as a means to trigger deeper research in this field, which will be carried out by the QA&TEST Research & Analysis Centre in the future.
The results of this study have been a great contribution to the Technical Committee of the QA&TEST Conference in their process of identifying the needs of the embedded systems of the Community during the design of the programme of the upcoming 9th edition of the conference.
The results of this study will be published shortly on the QA&TEST website (www.qatest.org); nonetheless, these are some of its most interesting conclusions:
- Regarding the most relevant future challenges in the testing and QA processes; 50% of the polled professionals, highlight the early detection for errors and the effective design of testing cases as the main methods to achieve a cost reduction.
- A high percentage of the interviewed professionals highlight the importance of a multidisciplinary testing team well integrated with development, and the importance of having access to appropriate formative courses.
- The increase of the functional complexity of the characteristics of the systems and products, the greater security requirements, and the shortened “time to market” period of the products, are also underlined as challenges to be faced in the future.
- Other highlighted issues related to technology, are the complexity of the demands imposed by the standards and the existence of new development frameworks.
- Another surprising outcome of the study is that only about 25% of the polled find personal certifications such as ITIL, ISEB, ISTQB, etc. relevant in their organization.
In regards to the QA&TEST Conference, the presence of tool manufacturing companies and the chance to have a place to meet and interact with them is considered as a very important added value aspect of the testing conferences.
The preferred topics for a conference such as QA&TEST are: Verification and Validation Methods and Techniques; Agile, Scrum and Model Based Testing and Quality Metrics for Systems and Products, among others.
All the information derived from this study is without a doubt very valuable and will be taken into account by the organization for the production of the QA&TEST 2010 programme.
