Improvements For An Embedded Software Testing Method

Testing is a widespread subject that usually is divided into hardware testing and softwaretesting. The software testing can be done in many different ways and there exist severalstandards and guidelines for successful testing.This master thesis has investigated the possibilities for improvement of a software testmethod used by a large Swedish company. The work has been carried out at the Integrationand Verification department at the company. An investigation of the undetected defectsduring the test execution is carried out to explore those characteristics, which are not coveredby the current testing method.The purpose with this master thesis is to evaluate the company’s testing method and to givesuggestions for possible improvements in the process during the system integration phase ofthe development processOne part of the work includes a survey by interviewing key personnel’s for getting a betterinsight of the problem, a thorough literature study and attendance at a course providing anoverview of the system.The other part of the work was the examination of a database storing all the data related tothe faults from different projects. The result from the examination shows that 4.4 percent ofall the faults submitted are found after the testing phase, 79.1 percent of these faults arerelated to the software in the system. Further investigation showed that 51.2 percent of thetotal number of faults found after the test phase where related to the systems configurationdatabase and the administrator tool for the system.The conclusion to be drawn from these results is that the testing method being used by thecompany is good. However, there is room for improvement for some parts of the method.Most of the faults discovered after the testing process are faults related to the systemconfiguration database and the administrator tool for the system. The method for testing thesetwo parts of the system should be reviewed and improved.