{"id":251,"date":"2010-11-15T10:56:35","date_gmt":"2010-11-15T18:56:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/?p=251"},"modified":"2010-11-15T10:56:35","modified_gmt":"2010-11-15T18:56:35","slug":"being-forward","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/being-forward\/","title":{"rendered":"Being Forward"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019m happy that <a href=\"http:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/?p=239\" target=\"_blank\">my last post<\/a> generated some discussion. I\u2019m not sure about the rest of the blogosphere, but for some reason I seem to get half or more of the comments privately instead of through the blog comment system. Something I heard from a few people was this comment (anonymity retained).<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><font style=\"background-color: #ffffff\">Why don\u2019t you list the forward thinking that testers should be concerned with? A list of topics may help advance things.<\/font><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>If I think if I had the full list of where software testing was heading, that I\u2019d certainly include it. But because that would mean I also had the ability to predict the future, first, I\u2019d buy a lottery ticket.<\/p>\n<p>But they probably(?) didn\u2019t mean that. I hope the questions were more about what <em>I thought<\/em> <em><u>some<\/u><\/em> <em>areas<\/em> to <em>explore may be. <\/em>I\u2019m not sure if I know that either \u2013 but I suppose I can share some random ideas (that I may or may not explore in future blog posts). <\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><font color=\"#2e2e2e\">I think we have a bit of an issue with <strong>data<\/strong>.<\/font> On one hand, we don\u2019t know what to do with the data we have. I\u2019ll be stronger \u2013 we don\u2019t have a freaking clue what to do with the software related data we have today. <em>But we don\u2019t have <strong>enough<\/strong> data to make good decisions<\/em>. There are two issue here \u2013 we need <em>more<\/em> data, and we need a way to interpret that data in a way that lets us make great decisions.<\/li>\n<li>We really have no idea (again, in general) how to design tests. We don\u2019t know which set of tests are relevant for a given software context, we don\u2019t understand which tests should be automated or performed manually, and we don\u2019t know how to design robust and reliable tests when we do automate. I know that this doesn\u2019t apply to some of you (or you think it doesn\u2019t apply), but testers do a huge amount of under-testing and over-testing. Finding a much better balance is a huge challenge.<\/li>\n<li>I\u2019m concerned with the way most test teams (and many software teams in general) are organized and managed (I mentioned this in a comment, and <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.abakas.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Catherine Powell<\/a> added her thoughts <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.abakas.com\/2010\/11\/manage-people-not-roles.html\" target=\"_blank\">in a blog post<\/a>). Software creation is <em>knowledge work<\/em> \u2013 yet we manage teams like they\u2019re making widgets. That approach is idiotic at best.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>What I\u2019m most worried about is what I stated originally \u2013 <em>I\u2019m worried that not enough people are worrying about this stuff<\/em>. <\/p>\n<p>But then I wonder if I should worry at all? Maybe software will always sort of suck, and average quality software is enough. If that\u2019s the case, then little or none of this matters \u2013 it\u2019s all a waste of money. I\u2019m serious \u2013 one possibility is that people just don\u2019t care enough about software quality to pay for it. Is it a viable option to stop (or massively reduce) software testing and pass the cost savings on to customers? <\/p>\n<p>Something else to explore later I suppose.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019m happy that my last post generated some discussion. I\u2019m not sure about the rest of the blogosphere, but for some reason I seem to get half or more of the comments privately instead of through the blog comment system. Something I heard from a few people was this comment (anonymity retained). Why don\u2019t you&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-allposts"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=251"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}