Impact factors of software test governance in Sri Lankan IT Industry

Abstract

In software development, software testing is one of the most important mechanisms for delivering high-quality products. It has been widely used in the software development industry over the last decade, as most software organizations have recognized the importance of testing. However, in most companies testing procedures are not standardized or aligned with their business strategies. Therefore, it is vital to properly govern the software testing processes as it affects the quality of product delivery and, as a result, customer satisfaction. Software test governance is about establishing rules and processes that organizations should follow, which helps to execute testing activities easier and effectively. It aligns software testing with business goals and objectives and enables the decision-making of the management. Implementation of test governance provides an explicit way of managing the individuals, procedures, and technology involve in the software testing process. This study aims to identify factors that influence software test governance. To achieve the objective of the study, a broad literature review and preliminary interviews with senior testing professionals were conducted and identified five different factors namely implementation of a clear test policy, defining explicit test strategies in organization-wide and specific program-wide, the establishment of a distinct testing unit, implementation of test training and mentoring programs, and, implementation of software test process auditing and reviews. A conceptual model was developed using identified variables and five hypotheses were built based on the conceptual model. An online survey was distributed among software test practitioners to gather sample data to test the formulated hypotheses which enable to prove whether there are associations between the identified variables and test governance. Statistical analysis was performed for the evaluation. The research findings reveal all these factors have strong relationships with software test governance. When considering the five identified influences, implementation of test process auditing and reviews has the comparatively highest influence, whereas creating a separate unit of test organization has the comparatively lowest influence.