InSTA 2023

10th International Workshop on Software Test Architecture (InSTA 2023) is the 10th series of international workshop on software test architecture. Software test architecture includes analyses of system under test, approaches to design test cases, and notation of software testing. Designing better software test architectures is important for software testing. The software test architecture is a key to the test strategy. In software testing, there are various keywords for test design concepts. However, there are no widely standardized diagrams or notations to communicate the test design concepts, to increase the productivity and reusability of tests by raising their levels of abstraction, to generally grasp the overall perspective of the software for testing it. By focusing on the higher concepts of test architectures, our discussions can raise the quality of the testing.

Test architectures must be approached indirectly as a part of the test strategies. Some organizations are working to establish new ways to design novel test architectures, but there is no unified understanding of the key concepts of test architectures. In InSTA workshop, researchers and practitioners will discuss the research works, industrial experiences and emerging ideas about software test architectures. The topics are concepts of test architectures like as abstraction of test cases, design of test architecture as application or enhancement of existing notation UML and UTP, test requirement analysis like as patterns for test requirement analysis, application of test architecture as quality evaluation of test architecture and other software testing related topics.

InSTA 2023 web site: https://www.aster.or.jp/workshops/insta2023/

Accepted Papers

Call for Papers

Recommended Topics or Themes

Concepts of software test architecture

• Software test architecture for machine learning systems
• Abstraction of test cases (e.g. test levels, test types, abstract equivalent classes, high-level test conditions and high-level test cases)
• Relationships of abstract test cases
• Separation of concerns for test
• Architecture of test suite based on abstract test cases (e.g. design of test levels and test types)
• Types of software test architecture (e.g. architecture of test suite and architecture of test system/environment)
• Similarities, differences and harmonization between test suite architecture and test system architecture
• Similarities and differences among software test architecture, test strategy, test plan and test sub-process in ISO/IEC/IEEE 29119

Design of software test architecture

• How to design several test levels
• How to design complicated test types and test cycles
• Design concepts for software test architecture design
• Modeling technique for software test architecture design
• Design patterns for software test architecture design
• Styles of software test architecture
• Quality characteristics of software test architecture (e.g. maintainability of test suite)
• Original diagrams and notation for software test architecture design
• Application or enhancement of existing notation (e.g. UML/UTP, SysML and future diagram for SPL)
• Connection of software test architecture design and test case design (e.g. structure of test case based on test architectural components)
• Meta-models or ontology for software test architectures

Test requirement analysis

• Whether software requirement specification is the goal of software test or not?
• How to model holistic test requirement
• How to model nonfunctional requirement for test
• How to organize test requirement for several source (e.g. from customer, from design and from environment)
• How to overview large-scale and complex requirements for test
• Analysis patterns for test requirement analysis
• Emerging techniques of test requirements analysis (e.g. using Natural Language Processing, Machine Learning, and etc.) Application of software test architecture
• Quality evaluation of software test architecture
• Overall test engineering methodology based on software test architecture design
• Reuse of software test architecture design
• Product line engineering of test suite (e.g. how to design and manage variants of test suite)
• Design example of software test architecture for large-scale and complicated system
• Roles and responsibilities of test architect
• Automation based on software test architecture (e.g. separating automated test and manual test in keyword driven testing based on software test architecture)
• Test process improvement based on software test architecture
• Relationships between software architectures and software test architectures
• Typical software test architecture for a domain and/or comparison among domains (e.g. banking, logistics, cloud, automotive, medical, industrial automation and telecommunications)
• Industrial experiments and case studies of software test architectures

Paper Submission

• Research papers (up to 10 pages) NOTE: Full Research papers must conform to the two-column IEEE conference publication format, not exceed 10 pages, including all text, figures, tables, and appendices; two additional pages containing only references are permitted.
• Industrial experience reports (up to 6 pages)
• Emerging idea proposals (up to 6 pages)

Research papers require both original work and quantitative evaluation. Industrial experience reports require practical insight or actual improvement in industry as well as (quantitative if possible) evaluation. Emerging idea proposals require vision, perspective, concept, new idea, new research theme proposal and cross-technical discussion around test architecture design.

All papers must conform to IEEE’s format: http://www.ieee.org/conferences_events/conferences/publishing/templates.html

Workshop papers will be published in the IEEE Digital Library in the form of a post-proceedings.

InSTA 2021 papers submissions site: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=insta2023