International Workshop on Software Product Line Testing September 26 , 2005 Rennes , France Co - located with SPLC 2005 - 9 th International Software Product Line Conference

The testability of a software component is the ability of the software to reveal its faults. In the development of high reliability systems, testability is an important quality attribute for guiding architecture decisions. The reuse of assets in a software product line propagates defects as readily as correct code. The strategic levels of reuse in a product line produce a high level of inter-dependency among the products in the product line that support this propagation. The increased frequency with which product line components are executed and the range of inputs over which they operate influence the amount of testing required to achieve specific levels of reliability. In this paper we begin the definition of a reasoning framework for testability by considering the characteristics of a product line that influence our view of how testable a component is.