The New International Software Testing Standards

In May 2007 ISO formed a working group to develop a new set of standards on software testing – a new area for ISO – these standards are now due for publication starting in May 2013. This initiative is closely-supported by IEEE and BSI, both of which have donated existing standards as source documents to the project (these standards will be retired when the new standards are published). The new ISO/IEC/IEEE 29119 Software Testing standards currently comprise four parts. The first covers ‘concepts and terminology’, the second ‘test processes’, the third ‘test documentation’, and the fourth ‘test techniques’. There are also two further parts in the pipeline on ‘test assessment’ and ‘keyword-driven testing’. This paper describes the rationale for developing these standards, progress on their development and the content of the different parts. Parts of ISO/IEC/IEEE 29119 have already been released in draft form for review (and subsequently been updated based on many thousands of comments) and are already being used within a number of multi-national organizations. These organizations are already seeing the benefits of reusing the well-defined processes and documentation provided by standards reflecting current industry best practices. Introduction Background to Software Testing Software testing has been a fundamental part of software development since well before life cycle models were defined, with references to a separate software testing activity being made as early as 1954. Today estimates for the proportion of life cycle costs spent on testing vary from below 20% up to 80% for safety-critical systems. Despite its long history and high costs, testing has been poorly covered in standards; this corresponds with similar poor coverage in academic courses and research. This paper introduces a new set of software testing standards, the development of which started in 2007, with the first parts due to be published in May 2013.