From Assumptions to Context-Specific Knowledge in the Area of Combined Static and Dynamic Quality Assurance

High-quality software is an indispensable requirement today. Low-quality products can result in high overall costs (e.g., due to rework). Quality assurance can help to reduce the number of defects before a software product is delivered. However, quality assurance itself can be a major cost driver, especially testing activities. One solution for balancing these costs is to focus testing on defect-prone parts, which is nowadays often done by using product and process metrics. However, data from static quality assurance activities that is available early is usually not considered when focusing testing activities. Integration of static and dynamic quality assurance activities is a promising strategy for exploiting synergy effects and, consequently, one way to reduce costs and effort. For effective and efficient integration, knowledge about the relationships between the integrated techniques is necessary, which is often not available. Thus, assumptions have to be stated and evaluated. Existing approaches for this typically describe procedures only on a high level. Therefore, this paper presents procedures how to define, derive, and evaluate assumptions in a systematic and detailed manner for the integrated inspection and testing (In²Test) approach.