Test Case Prioritization based on Fault Dependency

Software testers should prioritize test cases so that important ones are run earlier in the regression testing process to reduce the cost of regression testing. Test case prioritization techniques schedule test cases for execution in an order that improves the performance of regression testing. One of the performance goals i.e. the fault detection rate, measures how quickly faults are detected during the testing process. Improved rate of fault dependency detection can provide faster feedback on software and let developers debug the leading faults at first that cause other faults to appear later. Another performance goal i.e. severity detection rate among faults, measures how quickly more severe faults are detected earlier during testing process. Previous studies addressed the second goal, but did not consider dependency among faults. In this paper an algorithm is proposed to prioritize test cases based on rate of severity detection associated with dependent faults. The aim is to detect more severe leading faults earlier with least amount of execution time and to identify the effectiveness of prioritized test case. Index Terms—Software testing, Regression testing, Test case prioritization, Fault dependency, Software quality.