The Art of Software Testing

Description

Testing is by all means an important but also expensive software development tasks. Hence, researchers as well as practitioners are continuously searching for new and improved approaches to software testing. In this seminar, we will focus on specific advanced testing approaches, again from a research but also from an industry point of view.

Possible topics addressed this year:
  • Combinatorial Testing
  • (GUI) Test Coverage
  • Testing of Deployment Pipelines
  • Testing Infrastructure-As-Code
  • Optimizing Test Execution

Seminar Concept

While this seminar also teaches students how to write a scientific paper and present it, the main goal of this seminar is to bring students closer to research. Consequently, the addressed topics are emerging questions in current research that will be tackled by students and supervisors. Moreover, this seminar will be conducted in a conference-like style. In the process, students will learn to search for literature, gasp a research problem, use a popular conference management tool, review papers of fellow students, and prepare a good and straight-to-the-point presentation.

  1. Kick-off meeting: First meeting to discuss the research question, direction, and strategy
  2. Research and find your topic
  3. Discuss topic, literature, etc. with supervisor
  4. Narrow your research question
  5. Discuss outline and related work with supervisor
  6. Submit an abstract to a conference management system
  7. Submit a draft version of a paper to your supervisor
  8. Submit first version to the conference management system
  9. Review two other papers
  10. Polish your paper and submit final version to the conference management system
  11. Create, review with supervisor, and submit a presentation for the paper
  12. Present your paper at the end

Dates

Here are the preliminary dates and deadlines (iCAL file):

  • 18.10.2016 12:15-13:45 Kick-off meeting in room 9222 (E3)
  • 19.-21.10.2016 Appointment with supervisor: Discuss topic, literature, etc.
  • 02.-04.11.2016 Appointment with supervisor: Discuss outline and related work
  • 11.11.2016 Deadline: Submit abstract to EasyChair
  • 02.12.2016 Deadline: Email draft version of your paper to your supervisor
  • 07.-09.12.2016 Appointment with supervisor: Feedback on draft version
  • 23.12.2017 Deadline: Submit first version of your paper to EasyChair
  • 13.01.2017 Deadline: Submit reviews to EasyChair
  • 17.01.2017 12:15-13:45 Academic Presenting (part 1) in room 9222 (E3)
  • 20.01.2017 Deadline: Submit final version of your paper to EasyChair
  • 23.01.2017 Deadline: Email draft presentation to your supervisor
  • 24.01.2017 12:15-13:45 Academic Presenting (part 2) in room 9222 (E3)
  • 25.-27.01.2017 Appointment with supervisor: Feedback on presentation draft
  • 06.02.2017 Deadline: Submit final presentation to EasyChair
  • 09.02.2017 (09:00-18:00) Presentations in room 9u09 (E3)

Note that all appointments, i.e., the kick-off meeting (in the beginning), the academic presenting workshop, the presentation days (in the end), and your appointments with your supervisor are mandatory!

Prerequisites

  • Application: A brief motivation (instead of courses and grades)
  • Strong interest in software engineering
  • Strong interest in research
  • Basic LaTeX knowledge
  • Write and talk in English

Requirements

  • 1 research vision (short abstract in English)
  • 6-pages paper on a research topic (in English)
  • 2 reviews of 2 follow students’ papers (in English)
  • 1 presentation (in English)
  • 2 discussion questions (for 2 presentations)
  • Attend kick-off meeting
  • Attend all appointments with the supervisor
  • Attend Academic Presenting I+II
  • Attend all presentations of FsSE 2017 and AoST 2017

Contact

Andrej Dyck, M.Sc. seminar@swc.rwth-aachen.de

Course information

Supervisors
Course type

Seminar

Semester:

Winter semester 2016/2017

Course language
  • English
Course level
  • Bachelor
  • Master
Credit points 1

4

1: The actual number of credit points can vary depending on the study program's examination regulation version. Consult your examination regulation's module catalog or the campus information system to see the valid number of credit points.