{"id":295,"date":"2011-04-13T14:59:16","date_gmt":"2011-04-13T21:59:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/?p=295"},"modified":"2011-04-13T14:59:16","modified_gmt":"2011-04-13T21:59:16","slug":"ensuring-software-qualitymaybe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/ensuring-software-qualitymaybe\/","title":{"rendered":"“Ensuring Software Quality”…maybe"},"content":{"rendered":"

I ranted a bit on twitter last week about this book excerpt<\/a> from Capers Jones. I’ve always had respect for Jones’s work (and still do), but some of the statements in this writing grated on me a bit. This could be (and is likely) because of how I came across the article (more on that somewhere below), but I thought I\u2019d try to see if I could share my thoughts in more than 140 characters.<\/p>\n

Jones starts out this chapter by saying that testing isn’t enough, and that code inspections, static analysis, and other defect prevention techniques are necessary – all points I agree with completely. His comments on test organizations ("there is no standard way of testing software applications in 2009<\/em>") are certainly true – although I personally think it’s fine \u2013 or even good, that testing isn’t standard, and would hope that testing organizations can adapt to the software under test, customer segment, and market opportunity as appropriate.<\/p>\n

Jones writes, "It is an unfortunate fact that most forms of testing are not very efficient, and find only about 25% to 40% of the bugs that are actually present<\/em>". If all bugs were equal, I would put more weight on this statistic – but bugs come in a variety of flavors (far more than the severity levels we typically add in our bug tracking systems). I have no reason to doubt the numbers, and seem consistent with my own observations – which is why I am a big believer in the portfolio theory of test design (the more ideas you have and the better you can use them where they’re needed, the better testing you will do). I believe that with a large variety of test design ideas, that this statistic can be improved immensely.<\/p>\n

As I re-read the excerpt sentence by sentence, there are few points that I can call out as completely wrong – but there are several themes that still don’t sit well with me. They include:<\/p>\n