White Paper –
ISO/IEC/IEEE 29119: The New International Software Testing Standards
In May 2007 ISO formed a working group to develop a new set of standards on software testing. This was a new subject area for ISO and the first three of these standards were published in August 2013. This initiative is closely-supported by IEEE and BSI, both of which have donated existing standards as source documents to the project (these standards will be retired as the new standards are published).
The new ISO/IEC/IEEE 29119 Software Testing standards currently comprise five parts. The first covers ‘concepts and terminology’, the second ‘test processes’, the third ‘test documentation’, the fourth ‘test techniques’ and the fifth ‘keyword-driven testing’. There is also a further complementary standard (ISO/IEC 30363) on ‘test assessment’, which is based on part 2, test processes. This was published in August 2015. This paper describes the rationale for developing these standards, progress on their development and the content of the different parts.
Each of the parts of ISO/IEC/IEEE 29119 were released in draft form for review (and have subsequently been updated based on the many thousands of received comments) and are already being used within a number of multi-national organizations. These organizations are already seeing the benefits of reusing the well-defined processes and documentation provided by standards reflecting current industry best practices.
