Efficient reuse of domain-specific test knowledge: An industrial case in the smart card domain

While testing is heavily used and largely automated in software development projects, the reuse of test practices across similar projects in a given domain is seldom systematized and supported by adequate methods and tools. This paper presents a practical approach that emerged from a concrete industrial case in the smart card domain at STMicroelectronics Belgium in order to better address this kind of challenge. The central concept is a test knowledge repository organized as a collection of specific patterns named QPatterns. A systematic process was followed, first to gather, structure and abstract the test practices, then to produce and validate an initial repository, and finally to make it evolve later on Testers can then rely on this repository to produce high quality test plans identifying all the functional and nonfunctional aspects that have to be addressed, as well as the concrete tests that have to be developed within the context of a new project. A tool support was also developed and integrated in a traceable way into the existing industrial test environment. The approach was validated and is currently under deployment at STMicroelectronics Belgium.