SQS Software Quality Systems

Milestones 2009

28 - 29 October 2009

Conference

	Survey Partner

Take part in the
International Software Testing Industry Survey 2009

We invite you to participate in the annual Software & Systems Quality survey on the topic of Software Quality. The survey was created by K. J. Ross and SQS in partnership with WIPRO.

The survey results will provide a benchmark of current industry trends in software testing practices that may support and enhance your own IT Software Quality initiatives. Additionally it will highlight the similarities and differences between software testing practices within your organisation compared to that of other organisations in the industry. As a participant of the survey you will receive both a report containing the survey results and you will be entered into a prize draw to win a free MacBook Pro. Winner will be announced in November 2009.

Timeline

July 20 — Survey is open for data submission

October 28 — Results of the survey are presented at the Software & Systems Quality Conference in Melbourne, Australia

November — Survey reports are distributed electronically to participants

The results of the survey will be presented at the Software & Systems Quality Conference Australia
and will be available for survey participants free of charge in November 2009

Please, take the time to participate in this survey, which should take approximately 10 minutes.

Please note that the submission of the survey may not work with Google Chrome or Safari/iPhone.

Q.1 What proportion of your IT personnel would see themselves as full time testers (FTE)?

% of FTE

None of them

Q.2 Which of the following statements best describe your company’s view with regard to testing? (Multi-code – more than one answer may apply)

	Testing is an essential investment in the product
	Testing is a necessary evil
	The internal customer/business user should be fully involved in all stages of testing
	The internal customer/business user should be partly responsible for testing costs
	The internal customer/business user is not happy about being involved in testing
	Testing tools add real value in an organisation
	Testing improves the profitability of software production
	It's easier to find defects in software during testing than during any other activity
	Testing reduces software maintenance costs incurred after deployment
	Testers have the same level of respect as developers within the organisation
	Training in testing adds significant value

Q.3. In respect of your own testing activities, can you say whether you agree or disagree with the following…

Statement	Agree Completely	Agree in part	Disagree
Our testing is too slow
Our testing is too costly
Our testers do not know enough about the details of the business
We don’t have a consistent approach to testing on each product/project
Senior business managers do not understand the need for testing
We find it difficult to know when enough or too much testing has been done on a product/project
Too many of our applications/projects fail at go live due to poor testing

Q.4 How effective do you think a scaleable or flexible testing team would be in terms of planning and managing the activity of your testing team(s)?

	Very effective		Quite effective
	Not very effective		Not at all effective

Q.5 Is testing budgeted for separately as a component of the overall development funding?

	Yes, always		Yes, sometimes
	No specific allocation		Never

Q.6a Which of the following apply in your company?

	All of our testing is done in-house
	A proportion of our testing is outsourced
	We use both in-house and external testers

Q.6b Do you plan to outsource your software testing function to an external service provider within the next six to 12 months?

Yes

Maybe

Q.7 To what extent do you agree with these statements?

Statement	Way too low	Somewhat too low	About right	Somewhat too high	Way too high
IT executives consider spending on testing to be...
The business considers spending on testing to be...
The project managers consider spending on testing to be...
The test managers consider spending on testing to be...

Q.8 How much do you agree with the statement that the test team should be independent of the application development team?

Fully agree

Partially agree

Fully disagree

Q.9 What percentage of software development projects are:

Statements	Percentage
Successful – on time, within budget, meeting all requirements	%
Challenged – over budget	%
Challenged – over time	%
Challenged – not meeting all customer requirements at deployment	%
Cancelled during development	%
Check	SUM of the above should be 100%

Q.10 Which of the following, if any, do you see as the main advantages of off-shore testing?

Advantage
Reduced cost of testing
Improve testing time
Access to highly educated staff
Increased flexibility in the testing process
Standardised testing approach
Increased test team sizes
No advantages seen

Q.11 And which, if any, do you see as the main disadvantages of off-shore testing?

Disadvantage
Lack of understanding of the application/project being developed
Lack of communication with the company
Poor consistency with previous testing approaches
Loss of control/transparency of the testing process
Security of data
Time zone
Culture and Language
No disadvantages seen

Q.12 What percentage of your testing resources....

What percentage of your testing resources....	Percentage
have an IT degree?	%
are sourced from a business background?	%
are sourced from a testing background?	%
are sourced from a development background?	%
are sourced without any prior knowledge or experience with business, testing or development domains?	%

Q.13 How do the following attributes affect the quality with which testers perform their task.
Please rate each on a scale of 1 to 5 where 5 is very important and 1 is not at all important.

Factor	Rating
Testing theory
Testing techniques
Testing tools
Interpersonal skills
Business/system knowledge
Technical knowledge

Q.14 After testing your products/projects do you still suffer from post-release problems during the first few months?

	Yes, always		Yes, frequently
	Yes, occasionally		Never

Q.15a How would you describe the company’s investment in testing tools?

	Very high investment		Significant investment
	Not very high investment		Very low investment
	No Investment

Q.15b Which of the following tools are used in your organisation?

Borland/Segue	Compuware		Empirix
Excel	HP/Mercury		IBM Rational
Open Source	SQS	Others tools:

Q.15c Do you have any plans to invest (further) in test automation tools within the next few years?

Yes, we plan very high investment

Yes, we plan significant investment

Yes, but only slight investment

Don’t know/as yet undecided

Q.16 Would you agree that automation can deliver real value and return on investment?

Yes, strongly

Yes, marginally

Q.17a Do you give your staff testing training?

Yes
No

Roughly how many days per person and year?

Q.17b Is the training that you provide mostly….

Internal training

External training

Equally split between the two

Q.18 Which Conferences do you attend?

	Agile Testing Days
	Australian Computer Society Specialist Interest Group in Software Testing (ACS SIGIST)
	Australian New Zealand Testing Board (ANZTB) Conference
	Continuous Integration Testing Conference (CITCOF)
	Software & Systems Quality Conferences (e.g. SQC Australia)
	Software Testing Australia New Zealand (STANZ)
	Test Automation Worksop (TAW)
	Test Managers Workshop (TMF)
	Other conferences:

Personal details (fields marked with * are required)

Full Name *
Job Title
Company Name*
Street/P.O. Box
Postal Code/City
E-Mail*
Country*
Business Sector
Company size (Number of employees)

If you are interested in the PAC market survey from last year, please, click here.

Thank you for taking the time to complete our survey. The information you have provided is only available for the survey conductor and survey partner and will be summarized in an anonymous survey report. The survey conductor and survey partner may keep you informed about related products, services and other offerings through e-mail, telephone or postal mail. If you would prefer not to be contacted about related products, services and offerings please indicate this by checking the box below.

Please do not use the information I have provided to contact me in future.

Please don't fill out this field

Please note that the submission of the survey may not work with Google Chrome or Safari/iPhone.