Perfect Software and Other Illusions About Testing

“End of test: The application doesn’t meet my constraint (system compatibility). I will not buy it.” Recap: We test to be sure our software isn’t rejected because it fails to satisfy an essential customer constraint.

Ref. 9AFF-A

What I’ve described above could be called “acceptance testing,” but when you turn it around, you see the reasons—the reasons for testing from the producer’s point of view. You test to see whether your software product will sell. And “selling” includes cases in which you think users will be “forced” to use the software, such as when they are employees of an organization that mandates its use. Don’t kid yourself. Software users will find ways of not using software that they don’t want to use. So, even internal users have to be “sold”—though not all testers think of their work this way.

Ref. FECA-B