Improving progress tracking using automated testing techniques

Abstract: One of the problems when developing software is the difficulty of knowing how much that is done in a project. This is a basic condition to be able to estimate the remaining efforts with increased accuracy over time. To get accurate progress information it is important that the progress tracking is done in an objective way and also in an as simple way as possible. Our focus in this work has been software projects in general but a case study has also been performed at Ericsson Software Technology AB in Ronneby. We have studied the organization and performed interviews with project managers to find out if this really is a problem and if the process can be improved in some way to ease the task of progress tracking. This case study together with our literature study has resulted in a proposition for a solution. Our approach has been to use automated testing as a way to make progress tracking more objective. The result presented in this thesis is a base for a system that could ease the tracking of progress. In short, the system extracts information from an automated testing process and compares it with estimated figures to be able to automatically generate progress information.