Application of search-based software engineering methodologies for test suite optimization and evolution in mission critical mobile application development

Abstract

The demand for high quality mobile applications is constantly rising, especially in mission critical settings. Thus, new software engineering methodologies are needed in order to ensure the desired quality of an application. The research presented proposes a quality assurance methodology for mobile applications through test automation by optimizing test suites. The desired goal is to find a minimal test suite while maintaining efficiency and reducing execution cost. Furthermore to avoid invalidating an optimized test suite as the system under test evolves, the approach further proposes to extract patterns from the applied changes to an application. The evaluation plan comprises a combination of an empirical and an industrial case study based on open source projects and an industrial project in the healthcare domain. It is expected that the presented approach supports the testing process on mobile application platforms.