Mutation testing is a successful and powerful technique, specifically designed for injecting the artificial faults. Although it is effective at revealing the faults, test suite assessment and its reduction, however, suffer from the expense of executing a large number of mutants. The researchers have proposed different types of cost reduction techniques in the literature. These techniques highly depend on the inspection of mutation operators. Several metrics have been evolved for the same. The selective mutation technique is most frequently used by the researchers. In this paper, the authors investigate different metrics for evaluating the traditional mutation operators for Java. Results on 13 Java programs indicate how grouping few operators can impact the effectiveness of an adequate and minimal test suite, and how this could provide several cost benefits.

The role of test automation in Agile Software Development projects is of paramount importance. It is absolutely necessary to automate tests on agile projects as the number of test cases will continue to grow with each successive sprint. Through a Grounded Theory study involving 38 agile practitioners from 18 different software organizations in India, we identified five key challenges faced by agile practitioners and different strategies to overcome those challenges while practicing test automation. Understanding these challenges and strategies would help agile teams in streamlining their test automation practices.

With the advent of cloud, a large number of cloud providers have surfaced in the market. Cloud Consumers are rapidly using cloud services(IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS) to meet their business needs while cloud providers are rapidly developing much needed tools and environments. This rapid growth however is creating a significant need to develop fast and controlled mechanisms for managing costs, capacity and resources at agreed service levels in order to have a smooth adoption, management and maintenance of cloud for both consumers and providers. Cloud Services Brokerages (CSBs), an intermediary between the consumer and providers, emerges as a solution to address above need. In this paper we focus on reviewing the significance, role and services of a CSB, followed by a categorization of CSBs on the basis of the services they provide, and a method to select a CSB from a pool of CSBs.