A preliminary survey on software testing practices in Khyber PakhtunKhwa region of Pakistan

Conducted to ensure the quality of software products, the software testing process has a great significance in the software development and is the vital step of the verification and validation process. For conforming a software feature to the end user requirements, organizations rely on extensive testing procedures. Despite being the key factor, many of the software development industries/companies do not define/follow a systematic testing process. In this paper, we analyze/learn from the conducted surveys in the past and formulate a questionnaire for a survey in the northern region of Pakistan. To the best of our knowledge, no such survey has ever been conducted in Pakistan. Thus, our work can be used as a baseline for such surveys in other regions or for a survey at the country level. This survey focuses on various aspects of testing methodologies and techniques. With the analyses of the survey findings, we conclude that a testing "maturity" model (based on the cultural/organizational/political values/constraints) should be devised for the improvement of current testing practices to ensure the production of quality software. The survey is regional but the results and knowledge obtained are in line with the related surveys conducted in other regions of the globe.