Test and Defect Coverage Analytics Model for the assessment of software test adequacy

Software testing is an essential activity in software development process that has been widely used as a means of achieving software reliability and quality. Software practitioners rely on test coverage to decide whether software under test has achieved an acceptable level of reliability and can be released. The researchers in the field of software testing focus on defining meaningful test coverage as measures which are fre-quently used interchangeably with the notion of test adequacy criteria. Test and defect-based information are among widely used adequacy criteria in the literature. However, little work has been conducted into integrating the two important indicators from the analytics perspective. Therefore, in this paper, Test and Defect Coverage Analytics Model (TDCAM) is proposed. TDCAM provides an analytical view for practitioners to assess and validate the testing results. A case study has been conducted to reveal the practical implications of the proposed model. One of the findings shows that components with low branch coverage percentage tend to have more number of defects detected, in which supports previous work.