The Cost Of Incomplete Testing Is Only Gets Higher Over Time
Software isn’t the only thing that can be done badly. Some recent work on the house by certified professionals demonstrates that anyone can be sloppy. At least their mistakes were easily and quickly found and corrected.
It was certainly easy to find the problems after the workman left, but they could have been easily prevented, eliminating another roll of trucks and a homeowner’s ire. The same methods apply to delivering software as well, although the tools may be different.
It’s the beginning of the rainy season here in The OC, and I decided to have the galvanized rain gutters replaced with anodized aluminum. Making rain gutters is a real specialty in its own right, involving purpose-built tools that result in a nice looking custom installation without the usual custom costs. The problem was that they didn’t clean the gutters after the installation, and the extra screws and small metal scraps found their way into the lawns and garden beds. This makes garden work a bit of a hazard, and exposes the pets to possible cuts and all the bad things those could lead to. So, a few shop-vac sweeps and running water down the gutters into a sieve took care of what was left there, but what’s in the lawn will have to be picked up by the gardener’s lawnmowers over time.
During the same week we started to have some water hammer in part of the house. Turned out that a joist strap had come loose, which the plumber fixed OK. To make it worth his time, what with his having to go under the house and all, I had him add a water bib to the one external wall that doesn’t have one. Problem was that the water hammer just moved to another part of the house, so he had to go under the house again and check all the straps.
Which leads to the value of recursive testing. It takes some work to be able to do it with software (we use AutomatedQA, highly recommended), what with designing test cases before implementation, but it pays for itself long before the first revision. The tradesman generally have a simpler way: Listen for noise, or look for shiny objects, depending on what’s being worked on, but the principal and approach is the same.
Tags: automated qa, software, testing