Cooperative work in software testing

  • Authors:
  • David Martin;John Rooksby;Mark Rouncefield;Ian Sommerville

  • Affiliations:
  • XRCE, Grenoble, France;Lancaster University, Lancaster, United Kingdom;Lancaster University, Lancaster, United Kingdom;University of St Andrews, St Andrews, United Kingdom

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 2008 international workshop on Cooperative and human aspects of software engineering
  • Year:
  • 2008

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Abstract

Substantial effort in the development of any large system is invested in testing. Studies of testing tend to be either technical or concerned with the cognitive ability of testers. Our experience is that testing is not technical but socio-technical, involving a great deal of human and organisational effort, and that testing is not simply the kind of decontextualised 'puzzle solving' many cognitive approaches imply. We believe that cooperative work is foundational to getting testing done. In this position paper, we use data from four ethnographic studies to discuss just what that cooperative work is.