Topic: History of Testing

The separation of debugging from testing was initially introduced by Glenford J. Myers in his 1987 book the "Art of Software Testing". Although his attention was on breakage testing it illustrated the desire of the software engineering community to separate fundamental development activities, such as debugging, from that of verification. Drs. Dave Gelperin and William C. Hetzel classified in 1988 the phases and goals in software testing as follows: until 1956 it was the debugging oriented period, where testing was often associated to debugging: there was no clear difference between testing and debugging. From 1957-1978 there was the demonstration oriented period where debugging and testing was distinguished now - in this period it was shown, that software satisfies the requirements. The time between 1979-1982 is announced as the destruction oriented period, where the goal was to find errors. 1983-1987 is classified as the evaluation oriented period: intention here is that during the software lifecycle a product evaluation is provided and measuring quality. From 1988 on it was seen as prevention oriented period where tests were to demonstrate that software satisfies its specification, to detect faults and to prevent faults. Dr. Gelperin chaired the IEEE 829-1988 (Test Documentation Standard) with Dr. Hetzel writing the book "The Complete Guide of Software Testing". Both works were pivotal in to today's testing culture and remain a consistent source of reference. Dr. Gelperin and Jerry E. Durant also went on to develop High Impact Inspection Technology that builds upon traditional Inspections but utilizes a test driven additive.