J. Yang et al. (Eds.): UNISCON 2009, LNBIP 20, pp. 404–410, 2009. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2009 Incorporating Software Testing as a Discipline in Curriculum of Computing Courses Simi (Kamini) Bajaj 1 and Shyamala Balram 2 1 University of Western Sydney, Locked Bag 1797, Penrith South DC, 1797, NSW, Australia Tel: +61-2-96859253, Fax: +61-2-96859557 k.bajaj@uws.edu.au 2 Vice President & Head - Sydney PACE Lab, Polaris Software Pty Limited. Level 9, 31 Market Street, Sydney NSW 2000 Visiting Lecturer, UWS shyamala.balram@polaris.co.in Abstract. One of the very important aspects of software quality is software test- ing. Software testing consumes 30%-50% of the most software projects. Testing should not only be performed for the quality or development process require- ment but due to the fact that testing needs to ensure that the software performs what it is supposed to do. UWS has responded to this need of the software test- ing in industry by introducing a course on Software Testing- ‘Fundamentals of Software Testing’ in undergraduate studies. This course is an outcome of stra- tegic alignment of UWS with Polaris Software Pty Ltd involved in testing of large software projects. The course aims to prepare students for understanding of Software Testing Life cycle. This course is jointly delivered by academics and software testing specialists from industry, to provide a holistic view of software testing as practiced by the software industry. Keywords: Software Testing, Software testing education, testing training, Test management. 1 Introduction According to [1], 70% of software applications are built with defects, exceeded cost and time. There is enough evidence on the chaotic state to software development ranging from studies like The Robbins-Gioia Survey (2001), The Conference Board Survey (2001) , The KPMG Survey (1997), The Chaos Report (1995), The OASIG Survey (1995) which collectively identify a failure rate of software development pro- jects 50-70% [2]. There are research groups working on identifying the status such as Standish group, Gartner Research, and Forrester research. [3] reports money spent on cancelled IT projects in United Kingdom in last five years was AU$664 million. There are many examples where organizations failed to test the software such as Pa- triotic Missile Defense System (1991), Disney Lion King (1994-95), Intel Pentium Floating Division Bug (1994), NASA Mars Polar Lander (1999),Dangerous viewing ahead(2004) [4]. All these examples clearly indicate a gap in the software develop- ment processes which fail to develop applications with acceptable level of defects.