Page - 79 - in The Future of Software Quality Assurance

Testing in the DigitalAge 79 Fig. 1 The six angles ofquality in the digital age Mechanical In the era of steam engines, for example, the “smoke test” was invented to check, by slowly increasing the pressure in the steam boiler, whether smoke was leaking somewhere fromthemachine. With 3D printing, the mechanical angle gets new attention. When replacement parts are printed 3D, they may have different material characteristics. Strength and temperature distribution are quite different when doing 3D printing (also called additivemanufacturing)opposedtoknownmethodssuchascastingwithplastics. Electrical With the inventionof electricity, a new angle to testing was added because not just mechanical things needed to be tested but also the less tangible new phenomenon of electricity. In the digital age we see new electrical phenomena such as wireless transfer of energy to charge batteries and wireless communication using a wide varietyofprotocolsand techniques. InformationProcessing Since theearlycomputersof the1950sand1960s,peoplehavebuilt techniquesand methods for testing software. The Year 2000 problem boosted the creation and use of testing methods and frameworks. TMap dates back to 1995 and gives a clear approachto testingcomplexITsystems. Withtheriseofmachineintelligenceandrobotics, testingmethodsareagainused to test basic informationprocessingcomponentsof intelligentmachines. Machine Intelligence Andnowwesee therapidriseofmachineintelligencewhichbringsnewchallenges to testengineeringprofessionals.Both the intelligencepart (especially the learning) and the machine part (robots) require this additional angle to quality. These intelligent machines bring a new challenge in the world around us: the impact of