Which Unchanged Components to Retest after a Technology Upgrade

Abstract

The Navy's open architecture framework is intended to promote reuse and reduce costs. This paper focuses on exploiting open architecture principles to reduce testing effort and costs in cases in which the requirements and code for a subsystem have not been changed, but the code is running on new hardware and/or new operating systems due to a technology-advancement upgrade. This situation is common in Navy and DoD contexts such as submarine, aircraft carrier, and airframe systems, and accounts for a substantial fraction of the testing effort. Unmodified software components need to be retested after a technology upgrade in some, but not necessarily in all cases. This paper reports some early research on conditions under which testing of unmodified components can be avoided after a technology upgrade, outlines an approach for identifying situations in which retesting can be safely reduced, and indicates how to focus retesting in cases in which it cannot be avoided.