Outsource testing can be a great way to get testing tasks accomplished when short on staff or equipment. Outsourcing can also be a great way to complement an existing QA group. However, it can also be a very costly approach towards testing and may not always be the best solution for a project. This paper will address how to define needs, evaluate labs and ways to merge an outsource effort into an existing staff.

The quality movement started in 1924 when Walter Shewhart gave his boss at Bell Labs a memo suggesting the use of statistics to improve quality in telephones. Later came Juran and Deming, and the movement was well on its way. Not surprisingly, the software industry eventually took up the challenge of systematically improving quality. Let's look at how that began.

This paper is based on our testing experience of two major releases (version 6 and version 7) of the multi-platform client/server software, SAS/SHARE product which is the database management system for SAS users. It describes our test automation strategy for version 6 and identifies the achievements and weaknesses of our approach and explains how we improve our test process.

The test process improvement effort for version 7 includes reduction of test automation level, use of macros that facilitate reproduction of defects in an interactive manner and extensive use of mega tests for early detection of defects as well as cross host and cross version tests.

Mutation Testing is a powerful method for finding errors in software programs. This paper will describe the process of mutation testing and how a new approach to this technology benefits the software industry.