Call for Speakers - Closing October 13th

Keynote 2

Testing the Gripen E Fighter Aircraft

Torvald Mårtensson

16:30-17:30 Wednesday 12th June

Testing of a large-scale and complex software system such as a fighter aircraft is a demanding task, with test activities spanning from automated testing of a software module to exploratory testing of the complete system. Still, many books and publications describe the idea of a perfect all-round tester that masters all these types of testing. This sets expectations that are difficult to meet for most engineers, leading to a higher risk that problems could be missed or overlooked. In contrast to this, we all need complementary profiles for the engineers working with testing, with knowledge and skills tailored for different types of test activities.

This talk will provide an overview of how we test the Gripen E fighter aircraft, with test activities on different levels, using different types of test techniques and utilizing different types of test environments, and how this requires engineers with different types of knowledge, skills and personality traits. Finally, this talk will present three examples of things we have seen work in practice in the Gripen E project: mutation testing used to improve the quality of the software, a complete system simulator available on every developer’s desk, and exploratory testing in teams with experienced engineers.