Continuous Evolutionary One-Step-Ahead Testing

The traditional software development life cycle considers testing to be an activity that occurs between the implemen-tation phase of development and software release [4]. With this approach any testing subsequent to release is done in reaction to failures reported by software users. The realities of software in operation however causes questions about this approach to arise. Adams [1] showed that organizations de-veloping significant software applications often provide sev-eral fixes after their software has been released as the result of errors found in the field. This work also showed that the most serious and frequently recurring errors are usually found by users soon after a product has been released. These are referred to by Adams [1] as virulent errors. The negative effects of remaining defects implies that post-release activi-ties should be proactive. These post-release activities must include continued testing by the vendor to find errors even after release. This paper proposes a solution to this require-ment. 2