💻 Debunking some testing myths: a testing reality check 💡

1) Coding standards & templates improves quality
White box testing and maintainability testing can focus on respecting coding standards and coding templates. While from a readability point of view this can appear to be a good idea, the effect on quality is very limited. In fact, research shows that implying coding standards has a negative effect on the quality (Boogerd et al, 2018). You want your developers first to focus on delivering functionality, not on respecting rules & regulations. Make a mess, clean it up. Or: code, check, refactor.

2) Experience Based Testing will find all important defects
Experience Based testing (e.g. Exploratory Testing) typically focusses on the end-user experience, with minimal attention to different roles or tools that allow us to probe for non-functional(quality) risks. All too often, testers only pay attention to business needs, and are reluctant to immerse themselves in the (business) concerns of their end users.

3) Regression Tests are great candidates for test Automation
Contrary to popular belief, automated testing is not the most effective and efficient solution for regression testing, because of its focus on verifying and validating things that are already believed to be of high priority. When it comes down to repetitive tasks, they distract us from the concept that some things are not worth repeating, suppressing variation instead of fostering it.

In general, research shows (Kumar & Mishra, 2016) that test automation has a limited positive effect on cost, a limited positive effect on time and a negative effect on quality (number of defects found).

So, how can testing help to improve quality?
There’s only one right answer that always applies: by putting the focus on static testing techniques such as code reviews. These have many advantages, such as increasing product quality, lowering the development cost, lowering the testing cost and lowering the maintenance cost. A movement towards code inspections results in a defect removal efficiency increase by an average of 85% (McIntosh & all, 2016).

No more excuses now, time to convince your management to start your code review journey. Yes, your coding will take more time. Yes, your velocity in your sprint will drop. But in the end, your product backlog will be ready and deployed earlier and more qualitative.