Using inspection results for prioritizing test activities

Today's software quality assurance techniques are often applied in isolation, without any consideration for the synergies resulting from systematically combining and integrating different techniques. Such combinations promise benefits, such as a reduction in quality assurance effort or higher defect detection rates. The integration of inspection and testing techniques, for instance, promises different synergy effects, especially reduced testing effort. Existing approaches for reducing testing effort are widely based on the use of metrics in order to predict fault-prone parts of a product or determine test exit criteria. However, they do not make systematic use of the results from inspections. In this article, a rule-based approach is presented that uses inspection results to prioritize test activities; i.e., test activities are focused on specific parts of the code or on specific defect types, which leads to reduced testing effort. Thus, an overall reduction in quality assurance effort is expected. Results from a case study show that a reduction in testing effort of between 6% and 34% was achievable at a quality level comparable to a non-integrated approach. In addition, related work is described and an outlook on future research is given.