Software testing: from theory to practice

Abstract

This paper is about the disparity between what is known and being learned in academia, and what is being used in industry. The author interprets the issue as "why aren't the ideas that researchers have developed being used in industry?". The paper presents a shopping list of reasons why industry does not use the highly advanced and in some cases highly developed software testing techniques that are available. For ease of digestion, the problems are divided into three broad categories: problems in industry, problems in academic research and education, and problems in the interface between the two. Because the most difficult problems are usually those in the interface, these are presented first.