Exploiting software architecture to support requirements satisfaction testing

Currently, software testing is mainly carried on independently from software architecture-related information. Some approaches propose to perform integration and regression testing with respect to software architecture descriptions, but less attention has been paid to analysing software architecture in order to develop a less costly and time-consuming test plan that covers the requirements of the system of interest. If on one side, it is well known that providing an effective test plan is crucial to software quality, on the other side software testing is extremely difficult because it stems from the complexity of current software systems. In this paper we (i) elaborate on how a new architectural analysis can help in producing better test plans and (ii) identify a set of corresponding research challenges. We believe that considering and analysing architectural information for requirements satisfaction testing purposes will provide substantial benefits in terms of test plan specification process, test plan effectiveness, and test cases understandability.