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Zeichick's Take: Thinking about testing, once again


By Alan Zeichick
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April 17, 2008 —  There’s a pattern: When I’m at a software testing conference, my thoughts are filled with issues regarding testing and quality assurance. Since today’s the first day of the Software Test & Performance Conference (STPCon), can you guess what thoughts are running through my mind?

At this moment, I’m pondering some of the questions regarding test automation. We’ve written quite a bit about it lately, both in SD Times and in its companion publication, Software Test & Performance. Test automation is a centerpiece of STPCon. Yet beyond, say, “Automating the test process is generally good, and you should do more of it,” it’s hard to know where it should begin—and where it should end.

That was the focus, by the way, of the special report in SD Times’ April 1 issue, written by Lisa Morgan. In “What are the best practices for automated Java testing,” she tackled some of the vexing questions.

“Regardless of whether commercial or open-source solutions are used, automated testing and manual testing tend to go hand in hand for a couple of reasons. First, it’s virtually impossible to achieve 100% coverage manually or in automated fashion, tool vendors said. Second, it doesn’t make sense to automate all tests, because they take considerable time to set up and run. A more effective approach, in terms of technology, time and costs, would be to identify areas where errors and vulnerabilities reside and apply automated tests to those areas,” Lisa wrote, quoting an IBM Rational engineering as saying, “You can automate yourself into a corner if you don’t know what to test.”

Maintenance of the test scripts is another problem. In some situations, complexity drives the need for automated test solutions, but the more tests you have, the trickier and more time-intensive it is to catalog, use, update and reuse those tests.

I love the list of best practices that Lisa developed for test automation. You can see how this is undoubtedly what many organizations use:

• Whatever the large consulting firms say they are.
• Whatever vendors say they are.
• Whatever other enterprises are doing.

Read her article, I’m sure you’ll enjoy it.

Changing the subject: This week, the debut issue of Systems Management News was published! Feel free to visit the Web site, download the April 15 issue, or sign up for a subscription. I’m sure you’ll enjoy it too!

Alan Zeichick is editorial director of SD Times. Read his blog at ztrek.blogspot.com.




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