Prestigious Vici grant for Andy Zaidman
No less than five TU Delft researchers will each receive 1.5 million euros from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO). One of them is Andy Zaidman (EEMCS), associate professor in Software Engineering. He receives the Vici grant for developing the innovative research line TestShift. With TestShift, Zaidman aims to instigate a radical shift in testing mind-set through test empowerment. Vici is one of the largest scientific grants for individuals in the Netherlands.
Software pervades all aspects of modern society, its dependability is essential. However, although software testing is the first line of defence against software failure, many software engineers do not know how to test, how much to test, or what to test. With his TestShift project, Dr. Zaidman wants to change this. To this end, he will investigate two previously unexplored areas of research: socio-technical factors in software testing and test visualisation.
TestShift will study how software team dynamics influence software testing culture in general and specific approaches in particular. At the level of individual software engineers, TestShift studies whether software engineers benefit from insight in software testing through test analytics. Software engineers will thus be able to gauge cause and effect of their efforts, giving them a sense of purpose for testing. Finally, TestShift investigates advanced visualisation approaches geared towards understanding the intricacies of both newly created and existing developer test scenarios.