Visualizing Testing Activities to Support Continuous Integration: A Multiple Case Study

While efficient testing arrangements are the key for software companies that are striving for continuous integration, most companies struggle with arranging these highly complex and interconnected testing activities. There is often a lack of an adequate overview of companies' end-to-end testing activities, which tend to lead to problems such as double work, slow feedback loops, too many issues found during post-development, disconnected organizations, and unpredictable release schedules. We report from a multiple-case study in which we explore current testing arrangements at five different software development sites. The outcome of the study is a visualization technique of the testing activities involved from unit and component level to product and release level that support the identification of improvement areas. This model for visualizing the end-to-end testing activities for a system has been used to visualize these five cases and has been validated empirically.