During one of the workshop sessions at last weeks SIGIST, one of the delegates told the story about how testing was not happening as there was never a working test environment.
There wasn't a test environment as the DBA's were never free to set things up as they were too busy firefighting the problems being found in the live system.
And of course there were problems in the live system because insufficient testing was being done because of the lack of a test environment
Lots of vigorous nodding of heads from other delegates there ( including mine )
Sadly though, the delegate wouldn't have gone away with any answers - she would have learned how MS recruits its testers, how exploratory testing is over-rated, what things to consider when deciding what level to write her test cases to and how it was impossible to not visualise a pink elephant when told not to
She did stress how everyone was postitive where she worked, there was no developer/tester clash - which maybe was one clue to the problems. No-one wanted to be seen as negative and pointing out the problems that one day the technical debt should be paid off ( or at least pay off more than the interest payments ) - and unlike the auto makers and banks, there wont be the possibility of a government bailout
post your suggestions for breaking this cycle - and I'll see if the good members of the Software Testing Club have any ideas
Monday 15 December 2008
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1 comment:
Did he really mean Exploratory Testing was over-rated? I think he just pointed out that there was value in all approaches.
Maybe I read it in reverse, maybe it defends the value of scripted / prescriptive tests?
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