Test education: a CASS perspective

Abstract

The lack of formal test education has brought about a need to examine how test engineers developing test program sets (TPSs) are able to perform their tasks. A test engineer's skill in developing TPSs usually comes from one or more of the following three sources: Training on using the ATE; continuing education courses at some universities, on-site and at conferences; on-the-job training. The effectiveness of each of these approaches is in question. While ATE training is necessary, it is usually not intended to teach TPS development. Continuing education is only sparsely available and because it is taught by individual consultants it is not standardized. On-The-Job training is the least efficient and probably the least cost-effective, but appears to be the most common. This paper focuses on TPS development for the US Navy's CASS ATE, but the issues may apply throughout the test community. The authors used a questionnaire distributed among CASS TPS developers and managers aimed at identifying the various methods used for training and the advantages or disadvantages of each method. The questionnaire was aimed at identifying problem areas and finding solutions that will enable TPS developers to create better TPSs in shorter time. One of the goals of this effort was to identify the appropriate curriculum which will best prepare TPS developers for their jobs. The paper also explains how the expected savings will outweigh the training costs.