TestDCat: Catalog of Test Debt Subtypes and Management Activities

• Published in: Testing Software and Systems pp. 279 - 295
• Main Authors: Aragão, Bruno S., Andrade, Rossana M. C., Santos, Ismayle S., Castro, Rute N. S., Lelli, Valéria, Darin, Ticianne G. R.
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Cham Springer International Publishing
• Series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science
• Subjects: TD management activity; Technical Debt; Test Debt; Testing process
• ISBN: 3030312798; 9783030312794
• ISSN: 0302-9743; 1611-3349
• DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-31280-0_18

When deadlines and resources of software projects become scarce, testing is usually in the first row to have its activities aborted or reduced. If defects cannot be found, products quality can be affected. In a software development process, aborted or reduced activities that can bring short-term benefits, but can be harmful to the project in a long run, are considered Technical Debt (TD). When TDs impact testing activities, they are called Test Debt. There are several studies dealing with Test Debt, however, current solutions often deal with specific types of tests (e.g., exploratory and automated tests) and do not address the whole software testing process. Aiming to fill these gaps, this paper proposes a Test Debt Catalog with subtypes of Test Debts and technical debt management activities. This catalog was built based on semi-structured interviews conducted with practitioners who perform testing activities in five projects from industry. With our catalog, we intend to help the management of test debts during the execution of software testing processes.