• Eric M Russell (11/12/2013)


    Tom Bakerman (11/12/2013)


    Jeff Moden (11/12/2013)


    From the article:


    These days most testing of software is automated.

    Oddly enough, I believe that's part of the problem with delivered software, today. There's nothing like a human using the software as the ultimate test because that's the ultimate goal. I've also found that, except for certain types of load testing software, most automated software doesn't even consider performance and a lot of people don't set the test software up for "negative path" testing.

    I agree. It takes something special to be a good QA person, and most developers (I include myself) don't have it. Also, while the *Unit test frameworks work well for unit tests, they are still unit test. I believe that QA groups are still needed for the larger integration efforts. I haven't read or heard anything about the test matrix for the new healthcare market place, but I can make some guesses about what it looked like prior to the opening, and how much larger it will be in a couple of months.

    QA needs to be performed by a dedicated "QA engineer" using a formalized process and test plan. Simply asking the business analyst, a stake holder, or an intern to famliarize themselves with the requirements documents and then sit down and "poke around" with the application doesn't cut it.

    No - "poking around" won't cut it. Test coverage of code and test coverage of scenarios require quantitative analysis to determine progress.

    That said - a BA worth their salt should be able to take the requirements documentation, create a basic Ishikawa diagram of common failures, and document happy and sad paths to test. A QA engineer might be skilled in knowing how to CODE said tests into testing suite, but they would have to do the very same analysis to determine which tests to run if a BA was not involved.

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    Your lack of planning does not constitute an emergency on my part...unless you're my manager...or a director and above...or a really loud-spoken end-user..All right - what was my emergency again?