Objective
Testing is a significant task in all software development projects, but as long as software localisation is considered testing is the task with the major role. The quality of testing is directly connected to the quality of the localised Software that will be delivered back to the client and it constitutes the 53% of the overall software localisation costs. Failing to perform efficient testing, may lead to a decrease of the quality or fail to meet the project deadlines, both disastrous for the customer and the localisation service provider. Such inefficiencies are usually identified at the very end of the project, when a corrective action is very expensive and sometimes leads the whole localisation project to a clear loss. On the other hand, without having established a mechanism to determine when testing should be stopped, the project manager takes serious risks either by "over-testing" a product or by "under-testing" it. The ARETES project wishes to adopt and evaluate Software Reliability Engineering (SRE) methods in order to achieve close follow-up of the testing process, early failure detection, early prediction of delays, identification of testing team weaknesses and judgement when to stop testing.
THE EXPERIMENT
The SRE methodology imposes first of all the preparation of an Operational Profile for the product under test. The Operation Profile is defined as a set of operations that the software can execute along with the probability with which they occur and it aims at the identification of the part of the software that attracts the majority of the usage by a specific user profile. It helps testing teams to plan test activities, generate test cases and select test runs. In guiding regression testing, it tends to find, among the faults introduced by changes, the ones that have the most effect on the reliability.
The SRE methodology provides the ability to evaluate, at any phase of a software localisation (or development) project, the reliability factor of the product, with the application of a software reliability model. A software reliability model specifies the general form of the dependence of the failure process that affect it: fault introduction, fault removal and the operational environment. The failure rate of a system is generally decreased due to the discovery and removal of software failures. At any particular time it is possible to observe a history of the failure rate of the software. Software reliability modelling forecasts the curve of the failure rate by statistical evidence. The purpose of this evidence is twofold: (1) to predict the extra time needed to test the software to achieve a specified goal; (2) to predict the expected reliability of the software when the testing is finished.
EXPECTED IMPACT AND EXPERIENCE
Software Reliability Engineering is a sector that has not yet been applied in the software localisation process. Archetypon wishes to evaluate its application and has specific expectations from the ARETES project: a significant reduction in testing costs, an increase in testing productivity, earlier failure detection for severe failures, a reduction in customer-reported problems and an increase in accuracy of prediction of a project's ending date. Of course, the experience gained by the ARETES project, can be of interest not only to the software localisation market but also to the whole software industry, since SRE provides methods to achieve better resource management, more efficient use of resources, opportune product delivery to the customer, early identification of problems in the performance of the development team and significant reduction of software maintenance costs.
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