Studying human and social aspects of testing in a service-based software company: case study

  • Authors:

  • Hina Shah;Mary Jean Harrold

  • Affiliations:

  • Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia;Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 2010 ICSE Workshop on Cooperative and Human Aspects of Software Engineering
  • Year:
  • 2010

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Abstract

This paper presents a case study that reports the findings of a preliminary ethnographic study (35 days of fieldwork over a period of two months) conducted at a service-based software company. The focus of the study was on understanding the human-dimension and social aspects involved in software testing. In this paper, we present the design of the study, our observations, and the analysis of the findings. We also discuss the differences between the senior and junior participants' attitudes towards testing, how the seniors' attitudes influence the juniors' attitudes, and reasons that seem to motivate juniors to work on testing projects. Additionally, we report our findings about the relationship between enthusiasm and responsibility with ownership, the relationship between the developer and test engineer, the communication gaps faced by test engineers in various situations, and how hierarchical structuring in an organization may influence enthusiasm of the test engineers.