Viewpoint lessons from the tech transfer trenches

Abstract

Satish Chandra, Suresh Thummalapenta, an Saurabh Sinha present their experiences in taking their research project on test automation to business impact. The work performed was done in the context of IBM's service delivery organization. The topic of the research was regression testing for Web applications. In the research, they proposed a new approach to test automation. Their idea was to generate a program almost automatically based on lightweight natural language processing and local exploration, as is common in approaches to program synthesis. During the research, the authors learnt that for tech transfer the technology has to be of direct applicability to the business. They also learnt that the researchers should talk to their colleagues on the development side frequently to identify opportunities where a research insight can address a current problem. They should be prepared to propose and implement measurements on both costs and benefits that could be collected in an initial trial period. Researchers who desire their work to be adopted in production should be prepared to walk the long road from a research prototype to a production-ready tool.