Transfer of Testing Research from University to Industry: An Experience Report

Software Quality Lab (s-lab) is an open multi-private-public partnership institute for knowledge and technology transfer. In s-lab, partners from industrial software development closely cooperate with research groups of the University of Paderborn. Together with partners from industry, s-lab develops and evaluates constructive and analytical methods and tools of software engineering for obtaining high-quality software. Testing plays an important role in analytical quality assurance within s-lab’s activities. Thereby our main focus lies on the development of testing methods, test automation tools and test management concepts for the individual needs of the industrial partners. Because of the different requirements of the university and the industry; the cooperation involves some challenges, e.g. defining projects aiming at the commercial interests of the industry and addressing interesting research questions. In this paper, we give an overview of testing activities in s-lab and address targets and challenges of the cooperative work between industry and university. We also summarize the lessons learned during the numerous testing projects especially in the domain of business information systems.