"Some birds aren't meant to be caged, their feathers are just too bright"- Morgan Freeman, Shawshank Redemption. This blog is from one such bird who couldn't be caged by organizations who mandate scripted software testing. Pradeep Soundararajan welcomes you to this blog and wishes you a good time here and even otherwise.

Saturday, August 01, 2009

Traditional Software Testing Process - The cash cow demystified

So, I don't need to tell you that most of the software testing in the world is outsourced. I live in Bangalore and I assume a considerable amount of the world's outsourced testing projects are here. I meet testers from most of these organizations and hear the same process of testing software although called by different names their organization executives named them.

Most testers I meet lament about the process (or sucked within it for survival ) and approach they are forced to follow and try talking to their management about better ideas and better ways to test. Those executives don't seem to listen much nor willing to change.

Wondering why they wouldn't?

They have hit a cash cow.

Mark Crowther and I were discussing about Code Coverage & Requirements Based Testing in Test Republic and some how drove me to write about the way most businessmen are fooling their customers through the process they love to follow.

So, here it goes with editing and expansion. Assuming Mark from UK or maybe even you outsourced a testing project to me:


  • I would spend a couple of days analyzing your requirement document and bill you for X hours per person involved in my team.
  • I would spend a couple of days writing a test plan document ( but not refer to it ) and bill you for 2X hours per person involved in my team for preparing it.
  • I would spend a month or two writing test case document ( and refer only to it ) and bill you for 10X hours per person involved in my team for preparing it.
  • I would then again create a traceability matrix ( just to fool you and your boss about our coverage ) and bill you for 5X hours per person involved in my team for preparing it.
  • So far, total of 18X hours per person involved in the team is the billing.
  • Assuming X is 50 hours and there are about 10 members in my team, that's 18 * 50 * 10 = 9000 hours of billing with no single bug found yet. ( Mark wrote about it, too )
  • If you are paying $20 an hour per person on an average, you would have actually given me a business of $180,000 without me or my team finding any bug yet.
  • So after investing $1,80,000 on me and my team, you would want some benefits of that. So, you wouldn't pull the project out or move it to another vendor because more or less he would do the same and you would end up paying another $180,000
  • Then comes the test case execution cycles for our documented 10,000 tests out of a possible hundred million tests
  • For every new bug that you find out of the releases I make, my team would spend documenting the new test case, getting it reviewed and resulting in slower testing for you and more money for me.
  • So assuming running 10,000 tests take 2 weeks for a team of 10 members to execute. Also assuming least 50 cycles of testing, you would have paid me about $140,000 for a coverage whose value might be not worth of the money.
  • Of course there is additional documentation of missed test cases and other template filling activities that will be billed to you.
  • To fool you further, I would instruct my team to use some expensive license based tools ( what else will I do with the money you are pumping in ) to give you a sense of faster testing ( by foolishly comparing it with human speed of testing ) and call it "Automation Testing". It turns out that these tools could have helped me find bugs that are of not a great value to you but hey, we want to see test case pass more than fail.
  • Your coverage isn't improving much because we have converted manual tests to automated tests ( although its not the same test ) but to show you the speed of our tools.
  • So think about adding another $25,000 and giving you an illusion of an ROI of $100,000 while pumping multiples of $100,000 from your bank account to mine.
  • The CMM, TMM, Six Sigma, ISTQB scams are built around this eco-system to enable more money flow for hardly any value. Who knows there could be a cut for the people who know all this and yet do it.
Why wouldn't a businessman be glad about the traditional approaches to test software?

Are you asking about what happens to the users of the product?

  • Lets bother about the users of your product later during our maintenance billing phase. Don't you know SDLC ends in Maintenance Phase? If we do everything right in the previous stages then how do we prove we follow SDLC when there is hardly any work in maintenance phase?
While you are reading this, you shouldn't be thinking of this happening only in India but in most parts of the world and even within places like United States and Europe. There are smart businessmen everywhere. At one end they pay us but at the other end use us to make more money. We need money and they need us to make that. Don't make smart businessmen exclusive to India and leave your own country out of it.

I hope those who outsource start pushing for services that doesn't fool them. Who would actually listen to this argument is testers turned businessmen and testers turned outsourcing heads and testers turned business leaders.

Whenever I visit a testing services company and see a testimonial of a customer who talks about the great ROI they got and faster testing, I wonder what a heavy price they paid to believe so.

Exploratory Testing ++ , Context Driven Testing ++ , Rapid Software Testing ++ or else YourMoney --

Don't want to be fooled by outsourcing software testing? One of those who could be of help to you among many folks I know, is myself.

32 comments:

Pari said...

Its very disheartening to see the Scripted testing win over the Exploratory testing approach just because it brings more money to some self centered individuals or even a group of self centered individuals. It is a big challenge for the customers to wake up and realise what they are losing on. It is not just the money that they are losing, probably 'what is gone is gone anyway'. But what about the credibility that the customer had placed upon the organization which either tested in a traditional way or outsourced to another organization that does the same thing all over again. The credibility is LOST in the wilderness I guess.

It also hurts a lot to know that a lot of people all over the world think that a lot of shabby testing happens from India which is the so called 'Preferred country for Testing'. We need to figure out why a lot of people think so. Isn't it because the organizations which are outsourcing are mandating things to be done in a certain way hence deviating from the High Quality Work that was originally expected?

Unless and Until the outsourcing companies do not change their attitude with regard to the Traditional Software Testing process and/or the testing companies do not revolt to this way of testing, I am afraid we cannot expect much to change for the better. Its bitter, but its the truth!

Happy Testing,
Pari http://curioustester.blogspot.com

Pradeep Soundararajan said...

We need to figure out why a lot of people think so. Isn't it because the organizations which are outsourcing are mandating things to be done in a certain way hence deviating from the High Quality Work that was originally expected?

Scam can happen only when all parties co-ordinate together. So there must be some key people asking for poor stuff and key people delivering it. To these scam-mers certification folks appeal like friends to them.

I am afraid we cannot expect much to change for the better. Its bitter, but its the truth!


I urge you not to loose hope. You could contribute to a little change and then there could be more people like you. The question you might want to ask is: Will you and I be alive to see the change?

Irrespective of whether I am alive or not, I hope for a change and shall do all that needs for it. I am fighter.

Its very disheartening to see the Scripted testing win over the Exploratory testing approach just because it brings more money to some self centered individuals or even a group of self centered individuals. It is a big challenge for the customers to wake up and realise what they are losing on. It is not just the money that they are losing, probably 'what is gone is gone anyway'

I thin if customers wake up they will be saving lots of millions of dollars in the future.

The credibility is LOST in the wilderness I guess.

As long as we humans get shocked and inspired by what money others have made, their credibility wont deter.

Be the change by showing the change in you. I am sure you are on the way to do so.

Suresh said...

One of the best testing post i read man,you have put down whats there in the heart of millions of testers across world...

Thanks Happy Testing. Lets make a change ...

Pradeep Soundararajan said...

@Suresh,

Lets make a change ...

Thanks. Yes, together we can.

Anonymous said...

hi pradeep
there is some truth in this article that u posted but i feel the ending to be more of a marketing stuff for yourself. u are talking about change but y r u not suggesting some remedies for it....
if u as an individual or a firm would get a testing assignment what would be your approach... u have guts spell out honestly what would be your approach and compare it with what is happening presently.
agreed many things are going wrong but i feel many things are necessary. and as u said the US & the UK people are not mad to outsource there product to India for quality testing. We Indians do a far better job then they as we Indians are intellectually far ahead of them and they know this. The point of discussion that i would put forth is why is India not developing situations were they would show/take our names, i would have loved if your Guru James Bach would have considered u as his Guru

Pradeep Soundararajan said...

@Anonymous,

Whoever you are. I appreciate the time you took to post the above comment. I respect you for I see your passion to do something better in the comment. Anything that I say below that might irk you a little bit is to help you. Sorry for inflicting help but I saw a need.

there is some truth in this article that u posted but i feel the ending to be more of a marketing stuff for yourself.u are talking about change but y r u not suggesting some remedies for it....

If you are looking at only this article and not my entire blog you would feel they have no suggestions of how to improve but what about reading "Letter from India" from my blog post?

On my marketing - well, I wish there could be people who would take up their life mission to market me to the world. Moreover, you see most of the marketing I do is on my own blog and I think that's fair.

if u as an individual or a firm would get a testing assignment what would be your approach... u have guts spell out honestly what would be your approach and compare it with what is happening presently.

Context Driven Testing, Exploratory Testing and Rapid Software Testing

The point of discussion that i would put forth is why is India not developing situations were they would show/take our names, i would have loved if your Guru James Bach would have considered u as his Guru

Oh, you want India to improve and be a leader. I think more people like you should come out post comments with their name and the organization they work for and boldly say, "My organization testing process is pathetic for these these these reasons" out in public.

When you see yourselves and others like you doing it, India would be a leader.

James Bach considering me as a guru. I never thought that nor want to think about it. James is James and Pradeep is Pradeep.

I am not trying to be a guru for software testing but want to help a few people to think better although the ideas I present to help them think could be bad. I want to see if I can contribute to the community of software testers and lay a foundation for the next generations meanwhile earning money to survive.

I am an independent consultant and constantly have to market myself for my survival. My marketing strategy is simple - show my uniqueness. That's what I am doing through my blog.

Being an employee is cooler than being a consultant and being a consultant is more fun and more risk than being an employee. The fun part attracted me more.

agreed many things are going wrong but i feel many things are necessary. and as u said the US & the UK people are not mad to outsource there product to India for quality testing. We Indians do a far better job then they as we Indians are intellectually far ahead of them and they know this.

Again, if you are an Indian and want to talk proudly about the achievements please don't post a comment as Anonymous.

Please come back, comment and with a name and your details. Don't let me know who you were. Just be a normal commenter henceforth, please.

Parthi said...

Hi Pradeep,

Nice post, a tester proclaiming himself as an alternate to all those companies that have been cheating (by taking traditional testing approach) their clients and slamming the script based testing

I think the people who read your posts recognize the potential the Exploratory testing has to offer and I hope the advocates of the scripted testing read this and come out in open to challenge

Am felt relieved on reading your post because you seemed to have moved on with scripted testers to scripted testing and the reasons why testers its been widely used at the risk of clients not being served – see through the obvious. Something that I discussed with you about through my comments on one of your previous posts.

To elaborate more about the irony many of us share

Irony:
Even though the testers feel bored to run the test cases again and again, even though they like spending whatever time possible to play with the application (exploratory testing) which offers lot of challenges, learning, opportunity to find defects they continue running those test cases release over release.

Obvious:
Atleast with the small number of testers who I interact with on a daily basis go thru above irony and I can safely presume that this would be echoed by all the services based organizations of all size.

See thru the obvious:
This is something that I attempt and expect the likes of you as well.

1. If a tester (whoz running the scripts) gets the freedom to do heuristics testing, I bet he will gallop this. The reason why they continue with the traditional approach is I guess not because of the awareness about the benefits of exploratory testing
2. Even though they know ET can help them unearth lot of defects, they don’t do it because the organization they work mandate them to do so ??

Lets RCA #2

Do you really think the clients are blind and not capable to realize that they pay $9000 (even more as well) to have not even a single defect?


As I understand, the very human behavior pattern is to avoid risk.

By outsourcing, that’s exactly what we do. As an organization, I want to pass on the risk to someone else that can do my work with labels like “Cost”, “Operational reasons” and many more.

When an activity like “testing” is turned over to a second party, especially third party companies, it becomes imperative for the outsorucee to establish confidence in the client that they have the capabilities that are called to do the job.

Now it’s a two way situation; go with the abilities or competency of people (tester) or the organization (process)

It’s the practical difficult that a company cannot have expert testers ONLY in their payroll working across all the projects that are on flight. Even if an organization claim to have expert testers in their payroll, all the testers will not be internationally acclaimed or atleast have footprints outside the organization.


Now the other way around is on the Process and this where the argument begins !!

Here is where the organizations, testers take the easy way out or probably the only way they think is available ie going behind certification, going Six Sigma, ISO standards and so on.

Processes naturally introduces the documents and hence the testers end up spending 9000 hours


As the anonymous commenter suggested in the other comment (as I have been writing this since yesterday I got late and happy that it took tome as I could find there is one more guy who shares my thought), one doesnt need to be a rocket sceientist to see the lact of creativity in doing testing based on scripts and I bet no tester (unless the tester is really interested in doing testing) would like to spend time with the appliction than writing some document.

Hence as I try, its probably a better idea looking for some solution to all those testers (that includes myself) who are stuck with no way out, when I say that I donot endorse ET is the ONLY way out, perhaps one of them..

Pradeep Soundararajan said...

@Parthi,

Do you really think the clients are blind and not capable to realize that they pay $9000 (even more as well) to have not even a single defect?

If you signed an agreement with me that at Phase 1 the deliverable is a document X and then at Phase 2 the deliverable is document Y - you would be focusing on getting the deliverable.

Have you heard of inattentional blindness?


Hence as I try, its probably a better idea looking for some solution to all those testers (that includes myself) who are stuck with no way out, when I say that I donot endorse ET is the ONLY way out, perhaps one of them..


When you say ET is one of those ways, what other ways are you thinking about?

What ways have you experimented so far?

If someone wants me to convince that scripted approach is a way - I'd never bow to it because all these years I have burnt my time gathering information, experimenting with it and learning about the value of it. Unless I see an evidence I wouldn't. Speaking without evidence isn't a way to go.

It’s the practical difficult that a company cannot have expert testers ONLY in their payroll working across all the projects that are on flight. Even if an organization claim to have expert testers in their payroll, all the testers will not be internationally acclaimed or atleast have footprints outside the organization.

These organizations you talk about want body count and not brain count. How can body counting organizations produce quality?

Ask, why services organizations don't talk about brain count and instead use head count?

An expert tester doesn't always mean someone who has a public reputation. If they have such people and those people do not work with other expert testers outside, they aren't experts anymore.

Rahul Gupta said...

hi Pradeep,

Your post compelled me to think. I am not an expert. I have been in testing field for close to 3.5 years and have been thinking to come up with some regular blog on my experience with testing (which not happened yet) with a motto to learn.
I have used ET only in one situation and that too many a time, when time is limited for testing but one thing I could not find so far is "how will someone measure the effectiveness of testing" when it is done in ET way?
As far as I understood (in a small duration of 3.5 years) quality of testing can only be determined by measuring the quality of the product delievered....right?
But when someone use any of the other methods like Rapid Testing, ET, Context driven testing...how it can be measured. Please reply.

Pradeep Soundararajan said...

@Magnate,

Thanks for your comment. I urge you to keep sharing your experiences or questions or maybe your test reports on open source projects.

But when someone use any of the other methods like Rapid Testing, ET, Context driven testing...how it can be measured. Please reply.

Short Answer: Session Based Test Management. Google and Read. You will be fine.

Not so short answer: Software testing is providing quality related information to the management to help them take better informed decisions ( Cem Kaner )

If I could test in an exploratory way and yet provide a systematic report of my tests and results, why should I be caged by Step1: Click there Step 2: Click here

How is a CEO's effectiveness measured? Taking a pay of maybe 100 testers in that organization he should probably be more intensely measured than us right?

Is he following detailed procedures?

Ask yourselves if you would want to be a human robot who runs scripts without knowing why you should do that.

Moreover, also spend time reading my previous posts. Thanks once again.

Jobin said...

Pradeep..
I read your blogs when ever i get time.I have been working in Testing domain for the past one year so my knowledge of the domain might be restricted. After reading your above blog what I just felt was that this was a very efficient way of selling yourself.Exploratary Testing is definitely very efficient in finding bugs in less time and may find bugs which could not be found using the script. But scripted testing becomes essential coz all the testers working in the project might not be as keen as one should be. For such testers scripted testing would be the best way to test. But there would be others who are very much keen on what they do, how they do... So for them exploratary testing would be the best approach.
Now talking about hitting the cash cow, that was ridiculous of you to say that. Agreed organizations may be fooled to outsource the testing procedures to India and make them pay heftily for the services they are being offered.That is what is called marketing strategies.But so what, may be because of that testers are being paid handsomely. This is actually making sure that fellow testers are being paid as per the market standards and thus not discouraging people to come into testing.
You might benefit from the above blog, it might bring business for yourself but somewhere someone who is reading your blog might skeptical about investing in such procedures.
Anyways what i wanted to suggest you was don't just look for self benefits but rather think of the people who are also testers like you. Might be a big thing to say like that in this practical world but then that is what may make you stand out different.
Finally, i am not against change. But the approach of yours is what made me write this comment.

Pradeep Soundararajan said...

@Jobin,

But scripted testing becomes essential coz all the testers working in the project might not be as keen as one should be. For such testers scripted testing would be the best way to test.

You mean people hire ones who are not interesting in testing and trying to churn out work from them and scripts help. Well, I don't understand why we hire those who are not interested to do the work and then try to get them to do the work. It would be a mess.

Why not hire me for the Indian cricket team and give scripts of how to bat?

Now talking about hitting the cash cow, that was ridiculous of you to say that. Agreed organizations may be fooled to outsource the testing procedures to India and make them pay heftily for the services they are being offered.That is what is called marketing strategies.

If your marketing strategy is to fool your customers then you should be out of business.

This is actually making sure that fellow testers are being paid as per the market standards and thus not discouraging people to come into testing.

Again to pay testers we hire we fool our customers? Where does the money come from and why to fool customers?

Anyways what i wanted to suggest you was don't just look for self benefits but rather think of the people who are also testers like you.

Well, now that you know I am trying to self benefit, why don't you stop reading my blog?

If I said, "I am the only guy who could be of value to customers" - that's pure shit. Note my sentence, "Out of the folks I know who could be of value, I believe I am one among them"

Reading is a skill.

Finally, i am not against change. But the approach of yours is what made me write this comment.

My free advice to you: Do not conclude unless you have experimented enough.

I want to encourage you and see you writing better blog posts than me and more meaningful articles than me.

As you people are not writing it, I am made to look myself better. I seized the opportunity, while people like you didnt.

Come on, get going.

Carpe Deim!

Rahul Gupta said...

hi Pradeep,

In response to my comment (as "Magnate") you said "How is a CEO's effectiveness measured? Taking a pay of maybe 100 testers in that organization he should probably be more intensely measured than us right?
Is he following detailed procedures?
"
Can we say, If a CEO is following detailed procedures s/he is an effective CEO?
As far as I understand, following procedures means a manner of proceeding or a way of performing. When we map this to Testing, would it mean "Following detailed procedures in testing would result in effective testing?" and in testing detailed procedures are nothing but test cases or test scenarios which is certainly not Exploratory testing.....right? Please reply

Pradeep Soundararajan said...

@BugMagnate,

As far as I understand, following procedures means a manner of proceeding or a way of performing. When we map this to Testing, would it mean "Following detailed procedures in testing would result in effective testing?"

You can follow a procedure without writing it down. How do you brush your teeth?

nd in testing detailed procedures are nothing but test cases or test scenarios which is certainly not Exploratory testing.....right? Please reply

Exploratory testing as coined and defined by Cem Kaner is "Simultaneous test design, test execution and learning with an emphasis of personal freedom for a tester"

What I dont understand is - testers themselves oppose the idea of exploratory testing that talks about freedom of a tester.

Such testers are happy being slaves. I don't know how to help slaves.

Rahul Gupta said...

Thanks for mentioning Cem Kaner. I didn't know about him. I'll need to invest more time in understanding real ET.Thanks again.

Kashif Ali Habib said...

Hi pardeep,

Good inititive,we have to bring innovation in software testing to earn good respect for software testers.

Nice post.keep it up

Kashif Ali Habib said...

Nice initiative,

we should work together for innovation in software testing

Tauhidul Islam James said...

Pradeep:

I liked your bold statements. You outlined some facts that is noticeable. Thanks for the effort!
Just to share from my first job, we had to prepare a bunch of scripted test case plan and then hand over it to customer. i am pretty sure they never touched that...but it was a crucial formality and we had to spend a significant amount of time to write those test cases on each release phase.(Repeatedly!)
i could remember we figured out lots of risk issues prior to release as we got a chance (after executing those piled up test case suite) to test according to our self ideas,self strategies,intend to explore deeper,by revising thoughts and scenarios ,identifying and accepting new challenges.
We really enjoyed testing the product on that short period as we felt us more creative that time. We felt we were doing good job that is adding value to the product. We were helping each other to extract new test ideas,boost up others to identify what left unturned yet.
It took almost 1 year for our management and client to get that point and they gave us more time to test like us. In the mean time they kept their scripted test case plan rule on going beside this :)
The point i was try to make, customer and management have some confidence problem also,they always misjudge potentiality of test peoples. They are afraid of letting us go in our way. As a result they try to impose always some conventional wrapper- bunch of test case plan to increase their confidence on product quality.
They are fooling themselves and forcing us to act like fool and dumb and it is an obstacle to scale up our level.

Pradeep Soundararajan said...

@Tuhidul,

Thanks for sharing your experience. The strength of my blog is not with my posts but with people like you sharing your experiences.

They are fooling themselves and forcing us to act like fool and dumb and it is an obstacle to scale up our level.

Why do they interview us if they want to us to follow a script? Oh, they check for our English skills and memorization skills. A certification like ISTQB definitely enhances our ability to read poor test content in English and memorize the answers.

I think with SBTM, the world is likely to change. I think people like you and Sajjadul should start sharing your reports of testing of any open source software and write a case study of how it can be managed as well.

If Bangladesh can do what India or America could not, the world will definitely be shocked and start looking at Bangladesh as a great destination. Hey, folks of ISTQB have already invaded you, right?

Mgr. Anna Havlíčková (dříve Anna Borovcová) said...

Hi Pradeep, I have seen this in czech republic for some time now but I see diffrent explanation in my country. We don't have certified testers, we have a lot of clever perspective testers. But! BUT clever testers are resticted by other team members and managers, who do not understand testing. They do not understand it, so they just want to check a testing from their list. Testers are made to do test only so managers can say : testing - done, not to find bugs or improve quality. And that is realy sad. But I hope we can change it by educating those, who are willing to listen.

Pradeep Soundararajan said...

@Anna,

We don't have certified testers, we have a lot of clever perspective testers. But! BUT clever testers are resticted by other team members and managers, who do not understand testing.

I hope in a couple of years the situation will change when those who currently are restricted grow out to be managers.

Testers are made to do test only so managers can say : testing - done, not to find bugs or improve quality. And that is realy sad

Seen that happening in India as well. A compulsion to have a testing team to say we bother about quality. However, having a test team doesn't guarantee any kind of quality.

Moreover, if you look at this kind of companies and others - they give a false impression to testers making them think they are the God's of quality - just to blame them when a bug gets missed.

Hey (in some organizations ) testers are cheap resources to blame on, fire and hire someone as cheap as the earlier one.

Rahul Gupta said...

hi Pradeep,

I have repeatedly noticed that you mention "status/test reports of open source projects"? I tried but could not find.....please recommend some urls.

Pradeep Soundararajan said...

@BugMagnate,

www.sf.net for joining and contributing to open source software projects.

Now Google is also important tool.

Rahul Gupta said...

Thanks for sharing that with us Pradeep. Yes Google is an important tool :)

Anonymous said...

Hi Pradeep,

I really like this post.

You do make a convincing argument for why outsourcing has such a bad reputation and why a cash cow will never change.

The ROI often isn't there and it is a real shame that so many companies outsource without thinking about the alternatives. It's not just about the cost though, it's the quality and business reputation that is often on the line.

It's fair to say though that not all outsource teams use traditional and inflexible test models. Some do use the latest thinking, rapid testing, exploratory, quick and low key computer aided testing and very experienced test consultants.

Good post.

Rob..

Pradeep Soundararajan said...

@Rob,

The ROI often isn't there and it is a real shame that so many companies outsource without thinking about the alternatives. It's not just about the cost though, it's the quality and business reputation that is often on the line.

Species like us must learn to live those kind of species. The difficult part is when those species have money and authority and we work for them to get some of them :)

Although they outnumber us we are Spartans :)

Thanks for your comment. I hope I be of benefit to the community.

Anonymous said...

It is extremely interesting for me to read the post. Thanks for it. I like such themes and everything connected to them. I would like to read more on that blog soon.

Outsourced Software Testing said...

Hi, this article is very nice and informative. Your writing style is fabulous. Bye.

Haripriya Rachakonda said...

Hi Pradeep,
what you said is so true. In my previous company too we used to have so much useless documentation and at the end of the day I really wonder if anyone reads it again after its done. Our documentation starts during requirements phase we create a clarification log, then after reqs are signed off we start with test requirements and test plan. Once test plan is complete then in QC we used to document cases and test sets. Even for a small req change for example even wording change like from Admin to Administrator we are forced to give a change estimate like how many days need to rewrite the tests and execute them. And after test sets are executed then we write a Release Plan with instructions for app support for deployment. After release plan we write a Release Readiness document. And frankly end of the day we must have spent some just 5 days max on actual testing. If really we did so much documentation shouldn't we be giving bug free releases but no are releases are full with production defects once released in production.
And we also have an automation engineer but frankly I am not sure if ever any defects were found from running those automated tests.
I agree that documentation is important but are we over doing ourselves is that question we need to ask our management. How much is enough and where should we draw the line.

sunil said...

It is pleasure to run across your site

Anonymous said...

if you say ISTQB is making money , so is BBST by James Bach--- $200 dollars OMG... Then why do you recommend that course.. They are also making money by just figthing with ISTQb

Pradeep Soundararajan said...

@Anonymous,

I don't mind ISTQB making money but it is hardly close to testing - that's my problem.

Have you taken the BBST course? Read what everybody who took it and blogged about it has to say and you will know why I support it and why you may also want to.