Software Testing Is About Finding Bugs Before The User Does

Joe Winchester in his article The Trials of Software Testing looks at how the conflict between testers & developers, misuse of automated testing tools and misguided priorities of managers can mess up a software project. He makes some interesting points about how a project should approach testing.

The definition of testing that I buy and try to instill in others is that testing is done to find bugs in a piece of software before the user does…

The testers pummel the system from all angles, find dialogs that can’t be resized that should be, ones that can that shouldn’t, and mine obscure conditions under which the product operates oddly, ending everyday with huge smiles after raising record defect numbers against the product. Before you know it there are a gazillion defects raised against a product that possibly has nothing wrong with it anyway…

The developers curse and kick because they have to fix supposed defects rather than write new function, the testers clap with joy as they raise more bogus defects, e-mail wars ensue over who controls priority and severity, and the entire project is soured…

Step one is to take automated testing tools away from the testers; they just get consumed by them the way a child gets fascinated by Internet sites with penguins or dogs that can chat to each other…

Tell testers their role is to find defects before users do, and tell them to talk to users and get rid of any envy they have that they are not programmers…

Tell programmers they must write unit tests that run as part of the build process and a failed test is like a failed compilation run – the function is incomplete…

Finally, tell the managers to back off and stop using empirical nonsense to gauge the health of their project and go and talk to users, listen to feedback, and maybe get out a little more and look over the edge of their cubicle…

src- sys-con