Software testing industry standards

A standard appropriate for software testing would therefore be brief, clear, and non-specific. ISO is not this kind of standard. One common argument for standards is the requirements of industry regulators. Members of our community have experience working in these contexts and meeting these requirements. We suggest testing standards should be framed as principles that are consistent with the requirements, not a series of new rules that must be reconciled with them.

Another justification of standards is that testers should be accountable to stakeholders: testers must demonstrate that they are providing valuable information, effectively and efficiently.

We agree accountability is important, but do not believe that standards meet this need. Consider that the auditing profession does not demand generic, prescriptive testing standards.

The differences make it increasingly difficult to take a generic or checklist approach to auditing. Testers must offer more valuable information about quality of products than how many test cases were run and passed. Testers need to tell a valuable story, not fill in templates. A flexible, iterative approach is the state of the art, and has been for over a decade. In this standard, the usability is considered in terms of user performance and satisfaction. According to ISO , usability depends on context of use and the level of usability will change as the context changes.

This standard helps in organizing and enhancing the process related to software quality requirements and their evaluations. This standard deals with software packages delivered to the client. A methodology for establishing quality requirements, identifying, implementing, analyzing, and validating the process, and product of software quality metrics. Arnab Chakraborty. As this standard is yet to be published, I would like to touch upon the highlights of this new software testing standard.

This process model contains a set of indicators to be considered while interpreting the intent of a process reference model. The process reference model forms the basis for the process assessment model for software testing. A distinctly visible feature of the new software testing standards is that these would require extensive documentation, in contrast to the current agile practice , which stresses minimizing documentation. Standardization in a way can be beneficial, keeping in view the current globalization trends, onshore and offshore working models, some industry analysts feel that there is a greater need for standardization.

He believes there must be a starting point for any evolution. Most of the software testing community is in a dilemma to accept or denounce the new software testing standards, which are going to be recommended by the International Organization for Standardization ISO and there are numerous discussions happening on this topic among software testing professionals.

As far as my opinion goes, I strongly feel that current ISO standards have few glaring gaps and adopting a new set of standards in any area of software development is noteworthy and especially when these new software testing standards will encourage the independent testing practices and help software testers and the software testing community as a whole.

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