Test Automation to Enable Continuous Integration for an Automotive Platform: A Design Science Study of Software Download Function Case

Typ
Examensarbete för masterexamen
Master Thesis
Program
Computer systems and networks (MPCSN), MSc
Publicerad
2018
Författare
Thomas Simon, Jacob
Balabhadrapatruni, Anusha
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Continuous integration is being widely used in software industry for frequent product releases and better customer satisfaction through a set of standards which integrates software modules continuously, reduces feedback time between testing and defect fixing and delivers the product successfully into production environment without any errors. The development and testing of software in automotive industry is different from that of software industry mainly because of the proximity of software and hardware and the development of hardware and software modules by many different vendors. Thus adapting continuous integration practices to automotive industry is challenging and studies are going on to address the challenges which may improve the current scenario. The automotive industry follows a development model in which testing of certain functionality is done often. At the case company where the thesis study is conducted, the software download functionality is very important as it is used to add additional functionality or error correction in the Electronic Control Units or embedded computer system and this functionality is tested on multiple ECUs repeatedly before the car release. The software is updated periodically and the testing cycle has to be repeated after every update. However test engineers spend a substantial amount of time to test the software download functionality manually and the testing includes test execution, result analysis and reporting due to which there is higher feedback time between testing and defect fixing. In this thesis we identify some of the challenges in adapting continuous integration in automotive platform development and suggest recommendation to solve some of the challenges by implementing them to a sample functionality which is developed at the case company. One of the goals of adapting continuous integration in automotive industry is to reduce feedback time and the thesis focuses on this aspect by automating the software download testing process through test automation framework. The testing process consists of downloading the binary files for flashing, using flashing tool to check the sequence of download according to standards, logging the bus signals in CANoe and Wireshark and generating report that has information about the test steps. The thesis follows design science methodology using which automation framework is developed in three iterations and in each iteration, parts of testing process are automated. Interviews are conducted with test engineers during each iteration to understand the problem and to receive feedback.
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Data- och informationsvetenskap , Computer and Information Science
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