Minimal IT newsletters - testing
Test-driven development cuts costs and improves quality, but can be difficult to understand and justify. Thinking of testing as the formwork into which code concrete is poured can help you understand test-driven development and justify its adoption.
Some of the best programmers seem to do the least testing. Rather than criticise them, we should learn from them.
Testing is an increasingly important part of IT. We face serious problems with the long-term management and support of systems because testing tools are not based on standards.
If you think of testing and documentation as just tasks on your plan, they will be near worthless. If you rely on them as the authoritative specification of your system, they will be near perfect.
Can the principles that underpin test-driven development be applied to the definition and execution of IS strategy?
Advanced and specialised development tools may be unsuitable for complicated functionality because of difficulties with testing.
I recently implemented a software release with a significant bug in it. Does this mean my testing approach is flawed?
Fully automated regression tests are worth the high costs required to create them, but require confidence and discipline to gain the value.
Testing is not something that we do because we are strong at development. It is something we do because we know that we are weak.
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