Contribuições ao suporte cognitivo em teste de software unitário: um framework de tarefas e uma agenda de pesquisa

• Ano de defesa: 2018
• Autor(a) principal: Prado, Marllos Paiva
• Orientador(a): Vincenzi, Auri Marcelo Rizzo
• Banca de defesa: Vincenzi, Auri Marcelo Rizzo, Fabbri, Sandra Camargo Pinto Ferraz, Jorge, Rodrigo Funabashi, Rodrigues, Cássio Leonardo, Bulcão Neto, Renato de Freitas
• Tipo de documento: Tese
• Tipo de acesso: Acesso aberto
• Idioma: por
• Instituição de defesa: Universidade Federal de Goiás
• Programa de Pós-Graduação: Programa de Pós-graduação em Ciência da Computação em Rede UFG/UFMS (INF)
• Departamento: Instituto de Informática - INF (RG)
• País: Brasil
• Palavras-chave em Português: Teste unitário; Suporte cognitivo; Aspectos humanos no teste de software; Ferramentas de teste
• Palavras-chave em Inglês: Unit testing; Cognitive support; Human aspects in software testing; Test tools
• Área do conhecimento CNPq: CIENCIAS EXATAS E DA TERRA::CIENCIA DA COMPUTACAO
• Link de acesso: http://repositorio.bc.ufg.br/tede/handle/tede/8333

Unit testing is an important activity for improving software quality. Over the years, numerous automated tools have been proposed by the testing research community to enhance this activity. However, this thesis' literature review revealed that several research efforts have not considered the human aspects in the proposal of such tools. Also, unit test practitioners are not having the support of the existing tools to solve some mental tasks associated with the activity. Motivated by this gap, this thesis describes a sequence of studies carried out with the purpose of understanding, characterizing and proposing improvements in the cognitive support provided by the test tools, considering a qualitative approach centered on the perspective of test professionals that work at the unit level. The results revealed some primary tasks that require cognitive support of the tools in unit test review practice, including monitoring of pending and executed unit test tasks and navigation between unit testing artifacts. A framework summarizes the results of this study. A research agenda is developed based on the framework and serves as an actionable instrument for the testing community. The contributions of this study include suggestions for practical improvements to current tools and describe new research opportunities in the topic. Also, the methods used in the research are explained in details.