Software Testing Value _ Software Testing

Recently this topic has been hot, feeling is a good thing, finally someone began to think about the value of software testing, rather than blindly use software testing to make up for the scarcity of resources, so deliberately say their own ideas.


First, the need for software testing exists.


The purpose of software testing is inconsistent in various books, and it is more common to validate requirements and achieve consistency. Why these things can't be developed by ourselves. Need to test to do it. There are several reasons for this.


From a cognitive perspective: you cannot know your own mistakes.


If the development of the product needs to understand the error, then realize the inevitable error, even if their own testing can not find these communication understanding and cognitive errors, once the line will inevitably lead to damage to users. But the demand for software testing comes from the product, so it can make up for this defect and ultimately ensure quality. Here's a new question, which is whether the need for testing is not needed for product development. I think that the corresponding need for the lack of products can be appropriate to reduce the development test than the user can accept imperfections even without testing.


Psychologically: They are unwilling to prove their mistakes.


Development has always regarded its own products like children, no one would like to say that my * * is not good. Once you have this idea, it's hard to find out what's wrong with your product. Remember Hanghang was just born a few months when my husband once asked me: "Daughter is really very beautiful or we feel very beautiful." "I told him with certainty:" She is the most beautiful baby I have ever seen. "Then take a few months of photos to show off around. Now when I see the photos, I usually say to Hanghang, "look how ugly you looked when you were little." "There is a phenomenon in psychology called self-fulfilling prophecy, and once you think that your product is good, what you do is just to prove that our product is right, that it is good and that it is difficult to identify potential problems in the product." But the test from the beginning is to identify the purpose of the problem, so in the prevention of defects more targeted, efficiency and quality will be better than development.


From the process: the overall quality is not necessarily the responsibility of development.


The process of discovering defects is tedious in itself, especially to fully return to the entire link, which means that development does not have to discover the problems of others as long as it discovers its own problem. After discovering the problem, we also need to communicate with each other fully, reproduce the defect, verify the defect, the majority of the development is not willing to assume the responsibility of others, but for testing to ensure quality itself is its own responsibility.


From the characteristics: professional people do professional things.


Development and testing of their own characteristics are not the same, the development of the most should have the ability to think deeply and the love of technology, testing should be really careful and patient. If you don't have the ability, it may not be the right job for you. Of course, a lot of general quality is everyone should have, such as the depth of the business, programming ability and good communication skills, but the work is different, the focus is different. A very good development is not necessarily a good test, a good test is not necessarily a good development.


From role: Test on behalf of the user


Develop the vendor represented on the role, therefore, his monograph is to provide good products, so as to attract more users, the greatest benefit, and the test represents the user, therefore, he is from the user's point of view, to find product defects, promote product improvement, and ultimately enhance the user experience. So, with if the work of testing is just to ensure that quality is really a narrower understanding of the test, the ultimate goal of the test should be to ensure that the user experience, from this point of view to test can do more things, such as the discovery of the needs of the problem, affect the shape of products, balance product quality and online time point contradictions, improve the process, impact on product , develop even the attitude of the customer to treat the user experience. But there is no doubt that a defective product is the most impact of the user experience, a long-term failure to the maximum destroy users of the product trust, is the worst user experience, so that the test to prevent the problem from the more.


In summary, we explain some of the problems that have been developed to test our products, which illustrate the necessity and value of testing. Surgery has specialized, the finer the division of labor, the more efficient, this is the direction of social evolution, but also the direction of personalized development. We do not want a world of great harmony.


However, the recent elimination of testing sound more and more, it is inevitable that the reasons for it, from the current situation, part of the development has abandoned its own quality assurance, will itself be responsible for the quality of the responsibility delivery test to bear, resulting in more and more testing work, the test itself to reduce the threshold of recruitment, resulting in some of the test engineer redundancy, while , the lack of professionalism in the growth of the original test has left outsiders questioning the value of the test.


So, next, we need to discuss the scale of development testing, from any company level, it is certainly to pursue high efficiency, with the least resources to do the most things is the company's needs, but also should be the pursuit of each tester, how efficient, high-quality testing is the test itself to continue to pursue the goal. However, in different forms of products, the development of testing in different stages can not be generalized. Can be divided into the following aspects to consider:


1: Users: A large number of users of products, there is no doubt that the needs of the test will be more, some of the initial stage of the product, user size, small impact, you can consider reducing the cost of testing.


2: The expectation: The user pays the product, must have the high expectation, hoped has the good experience and the service, therefore needs more tests to guarantee the user experience.


3: Product Characteristics: Product manager's products, through multi-level communication, the probability of a larger error, need to test to make up for the loss of information and misinformation, technology-driven products, development itself is the product, clearly understand the functional characteristics of products, can consider the development of self-test, reduce the cost of communication.


Finally, thanks to all the voices of doubt, it is these voices that allow the tests to be rethought, to do better in reflection, to thank everyone for their expectations of the test, to assume more responsibility, to inspire more potential. Hope that all test friends correctly understand the value of testing, expand their contribution and contributions, our recognition is not to emphasize their own importance, but should be derived from our contribution and value. When our contribution is higher than the expectation, we can certainly win more applause.


This article is reproduced from the 51Testing Software test network, see more: http://www.51testing.com/html/news.html