DevelopsenseLogo

Facts and Figures in Software Engineering Research (Part 2)

On July 23, 2002, Capers Jones, Chief Scientist Emeritus of a company called Software Productivity Research gave a presentation called “SOFTWARE QUALITY IN 2002: A SURVEY OF THE STATE OF THE ART”. In this presentation, he shows data on a slide titled “U.S. Averages for Software Quality”. (Source: http://bit.ly/1rj19Ol, accessed September 5, 2014) It is not clear what “defect potentials” means. A slide preceding this one says defect potentials are … Read more

Facts and Figures in Software Engineering Research

On July 23, 2002, Capers Jones, Chief Scientist Emeritus of a company called Software Productivity Research, gave a presentation called “SOFTWARE QUALITY IN 2002: A SURVEY OF THE STATE OF THE ART”. In this presentation, he provided the sources for his data on the second slide: SPR clients from 1984 through 2002 • About 600 companies (150 clients in Fortune 500 set) • About 30 government/military groups • About 12,000 … Read more

A Response to Anne Mette Hass

In response to my earlier blog post, I received this comment from Anne Mette Hass. I’m going to reproduce it in its entirety, and then I’ll respond to each point. I think this ‘war’ against the ISO standard is so sad. Nobody has set out to or want to harm anybody else with this work. The more variation we have in viewpoints and the more civilized be can debate, the … Read more

Dramatis Personae

On September 8, Stuart Reid, the convenor of the Working Group, posted a response to the Stop 29119 petition that included this paragraph: (The petitioners claim that) “The standards ‘movement’ is politicized and driven by big business to the exclusion of others. A large proportion of the members of WG26 are listed at our About WG26 page along with their employers. This list does not support the assertion in the … Read more

Weighing the Evidence

I’m going to tell you a true story. Recently, in response to a few observations, I began to make a few changes in my diet and my habits. Perhaps you’ll be impressed. I cut down radically on my consumption of sugar. I cut down significantly on carbohydrates. (Very painful; I LOVE rice. I LOVE noodles.) I started drinking less alcohol. (See above.) I increased my intake of tea and water. … Read more

Construct Validity

A construct, in science, is (informally) a pattern or a means of categorizing something you’re talking about, especially when the thing you’re talking about is abstract. Constructs are really important in both qualitative and quantitative research, because they allow us to differentiate between “one of these” and “not one of these”, which is one of the first steps in measurement and analysis. If you want to describe something or count … Read more

Frequently-Asked Questions About the 29119 Controversy

This is a first stab at a frequently-asked questions list about the movement to stop ISO 29119. Here I speak for myself, and not for the community. If you see “we”, it refers to my perception of the community at large, but not necessarily to the whole community; your mileage may vary. There is plenty of discussion in the community; Huib Schoots is curating a collection of resources on the … Read more

An Example of Progress in the Drafting of ISO 29119

The proponents of ISO Standard 29119 proudly claim that they have received and responded to “literally thousands” of comments during the process of drafting the standard. So I thought it might be interesting to examine how one component of the basic model has changed or evolved through the course of its development. Here’s a screenshot of a diagram that illustrates the test planning process, taken from a presentation given in … Read more

Rising Against the Rent-Seekers

At CAST 2014, a quiet, modest, thoughtful, and very experienced man named James Christie gave a talk called “Standards: Promoting Quality or Restricting Competition?”. The talk followed on from his tutorial at EuroSTAR 2013 on working with auditors—James is a former auditor himself—and from his blogs on software standards over the years. James’ talk introduced to our community the term rent-seeking. Rent-seeking is the act of using political means—the exercise … Read more

The Sock Puppets of Formal Testing

Formal testing is testing that must be done in a specific way, or to check specific facts. In the Rapid Software Testing methodology, we map the formality of testing on a continuum. Sometimes it’s important to do testing in a formal way, and sometimes it’s not so important. From Rapid Software Testing. See http://www.satisfice.com/rst.pdf People sometimes tell me that they must test their software using a particular formal approach—for example, … Read more