This is the digital version of the printed book (Copyright © 2004). Testing is not a phase. Software developers should not simply throw software over the wall to test engineers when the developers have finished coding. A coordinated program of peer reviews and testing not only supplements a good software development process, it supports it. A good testing life cycle begins during the requirements elucidation phase of software development, and concludes when the product is ready to install or ship following a successful system test. Nevertheless, there is no one true way to test software; the best one can hope for is to possess a formal testing process that fits the needs of the testers as well as those of the organization and its customers. A formal test plan is more than an early step in the software testing process-it's a vital part of your software development life cycle. This book presents a series of tasks to help you develop a formal testing process model, as well as the inputs and outputs associated with each task. These tasks include: review of program plans development of the formal test plan creation of test documentation (test design, test cases, test software, and test procedures) acquisition of automated testing tools test execution updating the test documentation tailoring the model for projects of all sizes Whether you are an experienced test engineer looking for ways to improve your testing process, a new test engineer hoping to learn how to perform a good testing process, a newly assigned test manager or team leader who needs to learn more about testing, or a process improvement leader, this book will help you maximize your effectiveness.

Testing often accounts for more than 50% of the required e?ort during system development.Thechallengeforresearchistoreducethesecostsbyprovidingnew methods for the speci?cation and generation of high-quality tests. Experience has shown that the use of formal methods in testing represents a very important means for improving the testing process. Formal methods allow for the analysis andinterpretationofmodelsinarigorousandprecisemathematicalmanner.The use of formal methods is not restricted to system models only. Test models may alsobeexamined.Analyzingsystemmodelsprovidesthepossibilityofgenerating complete test suites in a systematic and possibly automated manner whereas examining test models allows for the detection of design errors in test suites and their optimization with respect to readability or compilation and execution time. Due to the numerous possibilities for their application, formal methods have become more and more popular in recent years. The Formal Approaches in Software Testing (FATES) workshop series also bene?ts from the growing popularity of formal methods. After the workshops in Aalborg (Denmark, 2001), Brno (Czech Republic, 2002) and Montr ́ eal (Canada, 2003), FATES 2004 in Linz (Austria) was the fourth workshop of this series. Similar to the workshop in 2003, FATES 2004 was organized in a?liation with the IEEE/ACM Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE 2004). FATES 2004 received 41 submissions. Each submission was reviewed by at least three independent reviewers from the Program Committee with the help of some additional reviewers. Based on their evaluations, 14 full papers and one wo- in-progress paper from 11 di?erent countries were selected for presentation.

Formal methods provide system designers with the possibility to analyze system models and reason about them with mathematical precision and rigor. The use of formal methods is not restricted to the early development phases of a system, though. The di?erent testing phases can also bene?t from them to ease the p- duction and application of e?ective and e?cient tests. Many still regard formal methods and testing as an odd combination. Formal methods traditionally aim at verifying and proving correctness (a typical academic activity), while testing shows only the presence of errors (this is what practitioners do). Nonetheless, there is an increasing interest in the use of formal methods in software testing. It is expected that formal approaches are about to make a major impact on eme- ing testing technologies and practices. Testing proves to be a good starting point for introducing formal methods in the software development process. This volume contains the papers presented at the 3rd Workshop on Formal Approaches to Testing of Software, FATES 2003, that was in a?liation with the IEEE/ACM Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE 2003). This year, FATES received 43 submissions. Each submission was reviewed by at least three independent reviewers from the program committee with the help of - ditional reviewers. Based on their evaluations, 18 papers submitted by authors from 13 di?erent countries were selected for presentation at the workshop.

This book is not primarily for software test and QA professionals who are working in 'typical' organizations. The Best Practice approach in this book is based on ITIL and is well suited to any IT organization that takes its software testing serious. Moreover, unless software engineering practices across the organization are mature the approach will probably fail. However, that does not prevent even an organization with a yet to be developed testing process from selecting best practices and tasks set forth in this book and applying them. The net result will be an incremental improvement, and may be the catalyst for larger improvements with large wins. This book is invaluable to organizations that are committed to software engineering at the defined, managed or optimizing levels of maturity. It distills formal test practices drawn from a variety of ITIL and IT service Management sources into a succinct, process-oriented guide. The book is filled with templates and examples to set up and manage the process. ITIL and IT Service Management are not rigid, but can be tailored to any software practices and approaches, especially by using the plans and templates provided. If your organization is pursuing software change without risk, or are contractually required to have a formal software engineering process or process capability, this book will address the software testing process areas of a larger initiative. However, do not overlook many of the small wins a chaotic organization can achieve by using many of the ideas in this book.

Written by the founder and executive director of the Quality Assurance Institute, which sponsors the most widely accepted certification program for software testing Software testing is a weak spot for most developers, and many have no system in place to find and correct defects quickly and efficiently This comprehensive resource provides step-by-step guidelines, checklists, and templates for each testing activity, as well as a self-assessment that helps readers identify the sections of the book that respond to their individual needs Covers the latest regulatory developments affecting software testing, including Sarbanes-Oxley Section 404, and provides guidelines for agile testing and testing for security, internal controls, and data warehouses CD-ROM with all checklists and templates saves testers countless hours of developing their own test documentation Note: CD-ROM/DVD and other supplementary materials are not included as part of eBook file.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed and peer-reviewed outcome of the Formal Methods and Testing (FORTEST) network - formed as a network established under UK EPSRC funding that investigated the relationships between formal (and semi-formal) methods and software testing - now being a subject group of two BCS Special Interest Groups: Formal Aspects of Computing Science (BCS FACS) and Special Interest Group in Software Testing (BCS SIGIST). Each of the 12 chapters in this book describes a way in which the study of formal methods and software testing can be combined in a manner that brings the benefits of formal methods (e.g., precision, clarity, provability) with the advantages of testing (e.g., scalability, generality, applicability).