Anagrafe della ricerca

The ubiquitous diffusion of web and mobile technologies pushes modern society toward the Digital Transformation, which is a key priority in the Horizon EU Framework, the Italian Research Program (PNR), and the national recovery and resilience plan (PNRR). Our everyday experience, as well as news in the media show many cases where the presumably good intentions are not met by the actual behavior of web and mobile (W&M) applications, which on the contrary are riddled with evident malfunctions. Software is not just a commodity, but it is the foundation on which our current world is built. It is therefore crucial to ensure software is of good quality and future-proof to support our society and its citizens. Many complementary approaches exist to improve the quality of software. Software testing is the most used in practice and it is proven to catch faults and guarantees a good level of reliability and resilience. EndGame focuses on End-to-End (E2E) testing of the W&M apps; E2E testing refers to validation of a complex system in its context. It is based on the concept of a scenario from the end-users perspective, which describes the sequence of steps for accomplishing a valuable procedure. E2E test practice is still often manual and thus it is considered tedious, error-prone, and yielding poor cost/effectiveness. EndGame aims to support the generation of relevant E2E test scenarios leveraging a powerful approach: gamification, i.e. the application of game-like mechanics to activities of different nature. It usually involves elements such as leaderboards, achievements, missions, and competitions between players. A gamified approach for E2E testing will enable testers to challenge each other in the hunt for hidden faults and vulnerabilities. Effective test scenarios will produce higher scores and, eventually, awards for the tester. EndGame approach will develop an advanced platform supporting the introduction of several gamification mechanics and empirically evaluate their effectiveness and efficiency. To validate W&M apps in their operational context, EndGame aims to support the execution of E2E test scenarios both in test and production environments, and concurrently by multiple users. This capability, along with strategies for recognizing unknown context states, can identify new tests covering unexplored scenarios and eventually improving software quality. EndGame will also address the quality of the test harness, in particular the test suites, by providing novel gamified approaches to reveal and remove issues - e.g., fragility, dependencies and flakiness - commonly found in test code so as to ensure the resilience of the tests themselves. Effectiveness of the solutions and practical relevance will be assessed in two real-world case studies. The improvements delivered by EndGame have the potential to foster the adoption of automated E2E tests in practice and thus significantly improve the overall quality of software systems.