The Benefits

Plugtests™ find errors or ambiguities in standards and thereby help improve the quality of standards.

Fast feedback into the standards process.
The earlier bugs are discovered, the cheaper it is to correct them. To start writing conformance test specifications in e.g. TTCN, the standard has to be quite mature. Also, the process of generating Abstract Test Suites in TTCN does take some time.

Plugtests™ take place early in the standards process and therefore allow a fast feedback on possible errors or ambiguities in the specification. Engineers say that these events definitely speed up the process of bringing products to the market.

Increased circle of participants - developers are active in the process.

Close interaction and cross fertilization between the people drafting and those implementing the standard is beneficial for the quality of the standard.

Plugtests™ gauge the market acceptance of a standard.
Publicity of Plugtests™ will raise awareness in the market about the standard.

Debugging a vendors implementation
Testing against products of other companies, engineers find errors in their implementation that they would not have found otherwise, or only much later.

Meeting other developers familiar with the standard
By making personal contact with developers of other companies and getting to know them, questions and answers that one doesnt want to post on a public mailing list can be exchanged after the event.

Overall, Plugtests™ save companies and the industry lots of time and money
Engineers rank the usefulness of these events consistently very high. In addition to discovering problems, these events allow testing with a wide range of vendors in a short amount of time. According to participants, much time and money is therefore saved as opposed to one-on-one scheduling.