Testing Evolving Software: Research to Practice

Speaker:        Professor Mary Jean Harrold
                Georgia Institute of Technology

Title:          "Testing Evolving Software: Research to Practice"

Date:           Monday, 3 September 2012

Time:           4:00pm - 5:00pm

Venue:          Lecture Theatre F (near lifts 25/26), HKUST

Abstract:

Maintaining and ensuring the quality of today's complex and rapidly
changing software systems and computing environments presents many
challenges.  Studies show that such maintenance can consume up to 80% of
the cost for the entire software lifecycle, and much of those maintenance
costs are devoted to testing.  Past research in testing of evolving
software has resulted in many techniques that have automated or partially
automated this process.  However, few of these techniques have been
successfully transferred to practice.  In this talk, I will present some
of these techniques that can improve the process of testing evolving
software.  I will then discuss the results of a recent study that
highlights the impediments to the use of these techniques in practice.
Finally, I will provide recommendations for future directions that will
remove the impediments and help to transfer the technology to practice.


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Biography:

Mary Jean Harrold is a Professor in the School of Computer Science at
Georgia Institute of Technology. Her research includes analysis and
testing of large, evolving software, fault localization and failure
identification using statistical analysis and visualization, and
monitoring deployed software to improve quality. Harrold received an NSF
National Young Investigator Award, and was named an ACM Fellow and an IEEE
Fellow. She serves on the Board of Directors for the Computing Research
Association (CRA) and the editorial board of JSTVR, and served on the
editorial boards of ACM TOSEM and TOPLAS and IEEE TSE. She served as NSF
ADVANCE Professor of Computing, on the leadership of team of the National
Center for Women in Information Technology (NCWIT), and on the CRA
Committee on the Status of Women in Computing Research (CRA-W). She
received the Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Pittsburgh.