We need to talk about testing

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2021-07-27 09:00:07

Why don’t we just automate all the testing? Is test coverage a useful metric? What does it mean to “shift testing left”? When and where should we be testing? How much is enough testing?

Over the years I have discussed these and similar questions many times, with programmers and testers and various other folks. These are important topics and they are often shrouded in confusion, misunderstanding, and tribalism. I have heard from both camps that programmers should / should not be writing tests, are / are not qualified, do / do not even understand testing, and so on.

We usually end up in a better place than where we started, so in this article I want to share some of the discussions we have so that you can have them too.

Much of the confusion stems from a lack of understanding of the purpose of testing, including, ironically, with many testers that I meet, so we don’t even have a shared frame of reference.

From here I will address each of these opening questions and discuss how testers and programmers can collaborate for a happy life. I hope this will cause you to reassess the discipline and the domain of testing, whatever your role, and to engage with it as the first-class work that it is.