News »Browse Articles » Does Software testing add value to the project?

Last weekend I was invited to give a presentation on TDD (Test Driven Development) to a bunch of techies who largely constituted programmers, a couple of IT managers and some testers. At first I had wished if the audience had a major population of software testers, but as the presentation progressed I began to realize that probably I was wrong in my wish! Want to know what made me think otherwise? Read on…

But before I can start writing this post, let me tell you that this post is basically for software programmers who think:

1. Software Testing does not do any good to the project!
2. What is the point in spending project resources on testing activity if doing so can not guarantee a “100% Bug-Free Pakka Product” [please don’t ask me for the meaning of that paraphrase. I am simply quoting a programmer from my recent presentation]
3. Software Testers are a bunch of crazy people who find it amusing to find defects in the code.
4. Testing is a dumb job. What’s the big fuss? Anybody can do it!
5. Software Testing is a worth less process. It does not add any value to the project!
Having said that, in this post I am not going to start again the traditional Programmer VS. Tester fight. I am a Tester and I am more concerned about Testing. Hence I will try to confine this post to busting the myths of a typical Programmer about the necessity and importance of Software Testing in a Software Development scenario rather than trying to prove how programming sucks and testing rocks!

Coming back to my recent presentation, when I was trying to point out the fact that “even if a tested product can be considered as robust and reliably (known) bug-free, it may not necessarily mean that it is a High Quality Product”, a programmer friend from the audience came up with the following view point. Here is a truncated version of the excerpt of the discussion:

Mr. Programmer: If a product cannot be guaranteed of high quality even after testing, then does it make any sense to spend time, energy and effort on testing it?

Me: Well, dear friend to answer this question first of all I will need to know your understanding of “high quality”. Quality is a multi-dimensional aspect. As Jerry Weinberg describes it - “Quality is value to some person(s) who matters”! In case of Software Development, testing alone cannot guarantee high quality of a product. Think of a video game that is free from any known bugs and is robust and stable enough but unfortunately it fails to engage the curiosity of the players (users). Would you still call it as a quality video game simply because it does not contain any visible defects and is quite robust? At any rate, Software Testing is not a salesperson job. As testers we test software. We don’t sell television sets where we can (and we are supposed to) give you guarantee for the product that we are trying to sell. As a matter of fact, even television companies these days offer warranty, which comes with a long list of “if you do this you void your warranty” terms listed under Conditions Apply* column. Then how can someone expect a tester to offer guarantee for a Product, which he has not even developed himself? Isn’t it unfair?

Mr. Programmer: Taking about fairness, even after years of release of Windows XP, still Microsoft keeps releasing Service Packs to patch defects that were shipped along with the original Product. If there can be bugs in a piece of application even after testing then where is the point in testing it in the first place?

Me: That is an interesting question, thanks. Before answering your question let me tell you some facts. In an average MNC the Tester:Programmer ratio hovers somewhere around 1:3. That means for every 3 developers there is one tester to test their coded program. In case of Microsoft the ratio is said to be 1:1 and in NASA it is known to be a whopping 3:1. As you can clearly see, NASA spends obviously lot of effort on testing its projects. So apparently their projects must be the most robust among all. Unfortunately still we see major space mission failures like Space Shuttle Columbia disaster from time to time. Does this mean that the testers of NASA are doing nothing? Why don’t we look at it at from a different perspective? Microsoft had to release 3 Service Packs for Windows XP. It is quite possible that in case of lack of enough testing effort the number of Service Packs could have been even 30! NASA ends up with a space shuttle mishap once in every decade (on an average). In case of lack of enough testing it could well have been 10 accidents per year!

Mr. Programmer: Okay that sounds like a plausible explanation. But how would you defend yourself in case a Product that was tested by your testing team is reported with user found defects? They are your (tester’s) defects, which have slipped into production, right?

Source:
http://software-testing-zone.blogspot.com/2008/10/software-testing-add-value-to-

No Comments For This News

Post a link to something interesting from another site, or submit your own original writing for the Testing community to read.