Knowledge management initiatives in software testing: A mapping study Érica Ferreira de Souza a,⇑ , Ricardo de Almeida Falbo b , Nandamudi L. Vijaykumar a a National Institute for Space Research (INPE), Av. dos Astronautas, 1758, 12227-010 São José dos Campos, SP, Brazil b Federal University of Espírito Santo (UFES), Av. Fernando Ferrari, 514, 29075-910 Vitória, ES, Brazil article info Article history: Received 7 December 2013 Received in revised form 21 May 2014 Accepted 22 May 2014 Available online 2 June 2014 Keywords: Software testing Knowledge management Mapping study abstract Context: Software testing is a knowledge intensive process, and, thus, Knowledge Management (KM) principles and techniques should be applied to manage software testing knowledge. Objective: This study conducts a survey on existing research on KM initiatives in software testing, in order to identify the state of the art in the area as well as the future research. Aspects such as purposes, types of knowledge, technologies and research type are investigated. Method: The mapping study was performed by searching seven electronic databases. We considered studies published until December 2013. The initial resulting set was comprised of 562 studies. From this set, a total of 13 studies were selected. For these 13, we performed snowballing and direct search to pub- lications of researchers and research groups that accomplished these studies. Results: From the mapping study, we identified 15 studies addressing KM initiatives in software testing that have been reviewed in order to extract relevant information on a set of research questions. Conclusions: Although only a few studies were found that addressed KM initiatives in software testing, the mapping shows an increasing interest in the topic in the recent years. Reuse of test cases is the per- spective that has received more attention. From the KM point of view, most of the studies discuss aspects related to providing automated support for managing testing knowledge by means of a KM system. More- over, as a main conclusion, the results show that KM is pointed out as an important strategy for increas- ing test effectiveness, as well as for improving the selection and application of suited techniques, methods and test cases. On the other hand, inadequacy of existing KM systems appears as the most cited problem related to applying KM in software testing. Ó 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Software development is an error prone task. To achieve quality software products, it is essential to perform Verification & Valida- tion (V&V) activities throughout the software development pro- cess. Verification and Validation (V&V) activities intend to ensure, respectively, that a software product is being built in con- formance with its specification, and that it satisfies its intended use and the user needs [12]. V&V activities can be static or dynamic. Static V&V activities are typically done by means of technical reviews and inspections, and they do not require code execution. Dynamic V&V activities, in turn, involve code execution, and are done by means of testing [10,25]. Thus, Software Testing consists of dynamic V&V of the behavior of a program on a finite set of test cases, against the expected behavior [12]. Advances in technology and the emergence of increasingly complex and critical applications require using testing strategies, in order to achieve high quality and reliability software products [3]. Currently, software testing is considered as a process consist- ing of activities, techniques, resources and tools [25,26]. During software testing, a significant amount of information is generated. In fact, software testing is a knowledge intensive process, and thus it is important to provide computerized support for tasks of acquir- ing, processing, analyzing and disseminating testing knowledge for reuse [3]. In this context, testing knowledge should be captured and represented in an affordable and manageable way, and there- fore, could make use of principles of knowledge management. According to O’Leary [29], Knowledge Management (KM) for- mally manages knowledge resources in order to facilitate access and reuse, typically by using advanced Information Technology (IT), playing a major supporting role in KM. IT-supported KM http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.infsof.2014.05.016 0950-5849/Ó 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. ⇑ Corresponding author. Tel.: +55 1232086549. E-mail addresses: erica.souza@lac.inpe.br (É.F. de Souza), falbo@inf.ufes.br (R.d.A. Falbo), vijay.nl@inpe.br (N.L. Vijaykumar). Information and Software Technology 57 (2015) 378–391 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Information and Software Technology journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/infsof