Software Testing in Small IT Companies: A (not only) South African Problem

Abstract

Small software companies make for the majority of software companies around the world, but their software development processes are often not as clearly defined and structured as in their larger counterparts. Especially the test process is often the most neglected part of the software process. This contribution analyses the software testing process in a small South African IT company, here called X, to determine the problems that currently cause it to deliver software fraught with too many defects. The findings of a survey conducted with all software developers in company X are discussed, and several typical problems are identified. We also discuss two prevalent test process improvement models that can be used to reason about the possibilities of process improvement. Solutions to those (or similar) problems often already exist, but a major part of the problem addressed in this contribution is the unawareness, or unfamiliarity, of many small industrial software developers and IT managers as far as the scientific literature on software science and engineering, and especially in our case: software testing, is concerned.