A mapping of prescribed assets in the ACM / IEEE and SBC curriculum to the test design and execution practices of TMMi

Abstract

This Research to Practice Full Paper presents that the test design and execution activities are essential in a testing process, as they involve the identification and analysis of assets in order to develop and apply effective test cases in the discovery of incidents. In general, these activities are related to architecture, execution, and test analysis, where the TMMi (Test Maturity Model integration) prescribes a process area with many goals and practices to perform them in an organized and effective way. In the applicability of Exploratory Test (ET), most test design activities are generally not performed because many professionals understand that it is an agile test approach that does not have a systematic strategy that can be used, so only execution activities are performed based on the tester's intuition or experience. Additionally, it is observed in the specialized literature the growth in the use of E T in the industry, making it important to have a teaching-learning approach with structured activities allowing the understanding of how to apply test design and execution. Thus, this work aims to carry out a mapping to establish curricular assets to compose a syllabus aimed at teaching-learning activities of test design and execution. From this, have a basis to extract the curricular guidelines directed to the teaching-learning of E T. This is aligned with the research question: How to match assets related to knowledge on test design and execution of TMMi that adhere to the ACM/IEEE (Association for Computing Machinery / Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) curriculum and the reference to training undergraduate course in Computing at SBC (Brazilian Computer Society)? The mapping took place sequentially: i) the study theme was defined, ii) the curriculum structures and their inputs to be analyzed were defined, iii) the description of each asset was identified, iv) the correspondence between the assets was made, and v) the mapping was validated using peer review. The activity “iv” was carried out based on the specific goals and practices related to the Test Design and Execution process area of TMMi to analyze the correlation of assets present in the SBC and ACM/IEEE curriculum guidelines. As a result, correspondence was generated on two levels, as follows: a) Training axes (SBC) and knowledge areas (ACM/IEEE) related to the test design and execution area of TMMi, b) Derived skills and contents (SBC), as well as topics and learning outcomes (ACM/IEEE) related to specific goals, specific practices and sub-practices of the TMMi process area. In general, the items listed above were identified, respectively, 13 assets and 110 items of assets adhering to the guidelines prescribed in the international and national curriculum for Test Design and Execution. The mapping encourages the development of a teaching plan focused on teaching and learning of ET design and execution, as there is a strong adherence of assets and their corresponding items with academic and industry practices. Such mapping should support the application of specific guidelines to ET.