Classic
Testing Mistakes
This is the original
list of classic testing mistakes:
The role of
testing
· Thinking the testing team
is responsible for assuring quality.
· Thinking that the purpose of testing
is to find bugs.
· Not finding the important bugs.
· Not reporting
usability problems.
· No focus on an estimate of quality (and on the
quality of that estimate).
· Reporting bug data without putting it into
context.
· Starting testing too late (bug detection, not bug
reduction)
Planning the complete
testing effort
· A testing effort biased
toward functional testing.
· Underemphasizing configuration testing.
·
Putting stress and load testing off to the last minute.
· Not testing the
documentation
· Not testing installation procedures.
· An overreliance
on beta testing.
· Finishing one testing task before moving on to the
next.
· Failing to correctly identify risky areas.
· Sticking
stubbornly to the test plan.
Personnel
issues
· Using testing as a
transitional job for new programmers.
· Recruiting testers from the ranks
of failed programmers.
· Testers are not domain experts.
· Not seeking
candidates from the customer service staff or technical writing staff.
·
Insisting that testers be able to program.
· A testing team that lacks
diversity.
· A physical separation between developers and testers.
·
Believing that programmers can’t test their own code.
· Programmers are
neither trained nor motivated to test.
The tester at
work
· Paying more attention to
running tests than to designing them.
· Unreviewed test designs.
·
Being too specific about test inputs and procedures.
· Not noticing and
exploring “irrelevant” oddities.
· Checking that the product does what it’s
supposed to do, but not that it doesn’t do
what it isn’t supposed to
do.
· Test suites that are understandable only by their owners.
·
Testing only through the user-visible interface.
· Poor bug
reporting.
· Adding only regression tests when bugs are found.
·
Failing to take notes for the next testing effort.
Test
automation
· Attempting to automate all
tests.
· Expecting to rerun manual tests.
· Using GUI capture/replay
tools to reduce test creation cost.
· Expecting regression tests to find a
high proportion of new bugs.
Code
coverage
· Embracing code coverage
with the devotion that only simple numbers can inspire.
· Removing tests
from a regression test suite just because they don’t add coverage.
· Using
coverage as a performance goal for testers.
· Abandoning coverage
entirely.
