RESUMEN

Most companies and testing books use the term unit testing, but its semantics varies widely in different organizations. Lund University researchers launched a survey in a company network to explore this variation. The survey, which involved companies in focus-group discussions and a questionnaire, focused on defining unit testing, discussing its practices, and evaluating a company's strengths and weaknesses. The results indicate a common understanding of unit testing's scope, although the aim and practices vary across companies. Practitioners can use the survey instruments as a baseline for measuring their unit testing practices and to start improvement initiatives.This article is part of a special issue on Software Testing.

RESUMEN

Researchers have studied and created a wide range of techniques to support software engineers during development. This article reports on the results of a survey of 135 participants that was conducted in Germany to shed light on the usage of and demand for intelligent assistance in software engineering activities. The survey showed that there's a high demand and acceptance for unobtrusive, quickly executable, and reactive assistance in core software engineering phases to help solve the problems at hand. In addition, several challenges for the future in software engineering work environments are pointed out.