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MINUTES OF THE

BCS SIGiST STANDARDS WORKING PARTY MEETING

HELD ON 21st May 2004

 Location                TSG Offices, London.

 

1. Attendance.

Present

Graham Thomas, Isabel Evans, Lawrance Titterton, Richard Neeve, Stuart Reid.

Apologies

Julian Harty, Margaret Edney

 

2. Agenda.

                        The agenda was agreed, with the addition of an item covering BSI and the discussion of a forum for the group was brought forward.

 

3. Review of ways of working

The meeting discussed the revised ways of working. The discussion ranged around whether the new approach was working or not. Although the group would like to have produced more material in the time since the last meeting, the general opinion was that we should persevere with the current approach, but revise it to adopt ‘pair authoring’. The group felt that this would help authors to focus on the work and making commitments between pairs would help with producing work. In effect pairing had already begun to happen between Isabel & Graham and Stuart & Julian.

The meeting discussed pairing and suggested that we should try and determine pairs to help with the current workload and also attempt to utilise all members of the working party. Also, we agreed that people could work in more than one pair at the same time.

(We also discussed what work was outstanding and agreed that we should do away with the concept of due dates for work. We should work in pairs and agree dates between the pairs for when work can be carried out.)

The following pairings were proposed:

 

04/5.1                      Proposed pairings

- Julian and Stuart to work together on the Compatibility example

JH / SR

- Isabel and Graham to work together on the conversion example.

IE/ GT

- Stuart and Lawrance to work together on a new example covering Robustness. Stability. Starting with a definition for review by the group, and check BS 9126.

SR/ LT

- Graham to offer to pair with Margaret on the work that she is doing on the Procedure example.

ME/ GT

- Richard and Graham to pair and work on an example for recovery testing. This will start with reviewing the work already completed on recovery.
Richard will check with his employers to see if he can base an example around the work he has been doing there.

RN/ GT

- Lawrance proposed that he would look producing an example on Usability, and that when he had identified a domain technique example a pair author would be identified.

LT

New Action.

 

 

4. The new website

 

Julian’s kind offer to pay for a web designer to work on the site was considered. The meeting agreed that it would like to thank Julian for this kind offer, but felt that it could not accept sponsorship form an individual in this way.

The discussion considered the pros and cons of the new website. In general all agreed that the new site had greater impact than the initial version, without this being a criticism of the original site, rather a complement to Lawrance for the effort that he had put in over the last few months, especially in presentation and optimising page access times.


The main issue surrounding the new website was one of navigation to the matrix, the domains and the techniques. After discussing what was actually being achieved by these three routes it was agreed to simplify this area of the site and just provide access to the matrix, from which hyperlinks could be included for definitions to domains and techniques.

As a general principle we agreed that the website should remain simple, so that it can be maintained by one person, currently Lawrance, and that the minimum of changes should be made, and only to areas which will improve the experience of using the site.

                                The following actions were agreed:

 

04/5.2                      Website

 

- Lawrance to update the website to simplify the access to the domain technique matrix and hyperlink to the domain and technique descriptions from the matrix.

LT

New Action.

 

 

5. A web forum

All present agreed that we should ask Paul Gerrard of System Evolutif to provide us with a private forum to speed up the way the working party communicates and works. This forum would only be accessible by the management and authoring group (Those invited to this meeting).

A brief discussion considered where the forum should reside; whether on the testing standards website, currently hosted by Systeme Evolutif, or as a closed area on the Systeme Evolutif website forum area. For ease of convenience and maintenance all agreed that in the short term it would be better to have a closed forum on the Systeme Evolutif forums rather than on the testing standards website.

04/5.3                      A web forum

 

- Graham will contact Paul Gerrard and request a web forum for the management and authoring group of the SWP, to be set up as a closed forum on the Systeme Evolutif forum site.

GT

- When the forum has been set-up Graham will circulate instructions for those not already set-up on the Systeme Evolutif forum site.

GT

- Topics will be set up on the forum for each of the techniques, meetings, and glossary definitions.

GT/ All

New Action.

 

 

6. Material under review

The meeting discussed when the current examples could be posted on the website. The general consensus was that we should still follow the review process; however we should review the examples in pairs first. Feedback should be through the forum, where it was suggested that topics should be set-up for each of the examples, where comments could be recorded.

A slight revision to the review process was proposed in that we should consider that e-mail to the review group should be replaced by a post to the forum. (The forums are set-up in such a way that individuals can subscribe to the forum, and will be notified by e-mail if there is a new post to look at. This does away with round robin e-mails.)

 

7. Living Glossary Update

There was a discussion between Isabel and Stuart about the living glossary and aligning this with the glossary produced by Ross Collard. And also whether we could have two definitions on our website for a term, or would include a link to other definitions

The following actions were agreed:

 

04/5.4                      Living Glossary

- Stuart will contact Ross Collard about the incorporation of his definitions.

SR

- Isabel will investigate linkage to the ASQ definitions.

IE

- Stuart will e-mail additional definitions from BS7925-1 to Lawrance for incorporation on the website.

SR/ LT

- Stuart will talk to Erik Van Veenendaal about his proposed glossary updates.

SR

New Action.

 

                               

8. BSI

Stuart reported that every 5 years or so BSI standards have to be ratified. Stuart has put in a proposal, which has been accepted by BSI, to review BS7925-2. He will set-up a working party to define the revised BS7925-2 standard for BSI, and also to update BS7925-1.

The following action was agreed:

04/5.5                      Standards

- Stuart agreed to review the new book by Lee Copeland A Practitioner’s Guide to Software Test Design ISBN 1-58053-791-X to see if there is anything that can be incorporated by the standards working party.

SR

New Action.

 

 

9. Any other business

                                The following AOB actions were identified:

 

04/5.6                      General actions

- Graham will contact Wayne Mallinson and request a copy of his Eurostar2003 presentation and paper on Usability for inclusion on the website.

GT

- Graham agreed to recommence activities as SWP secretary.

GT

- Graham agreed to write to Mike Smith of TSG to thank him for TSG sponsoring the SWP by providing rooms for meetings on an ad-hoc basis, and enquiring whether TSG would like recognition on the Testing Standards website.

GT

New Action.

 

 

10. Date of Next Meeting

                                A meeting date for the first two weeks in September was proposed.

 

Graham Thomas

16/04/03

Distribution:

Attendees, Testing Standards Website