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Author
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Topic: Is automated testing the answer?
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jimhazen
Member
Posts: 63
Registered: Jan 2002
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posted 10-26-2002 04:27 PM
    
CNote,
You need to put things in the language that management understands, dollars and cents. You have to show the economic reasons for justifying testing and the benefit it has to the company. Also, you have to show the cost of doing automation early on versus later on in the project cycle. It will be just as costly to start on either end, but if you try to automate early you will spend more time and money because you are trying to hit a moving target. It is the maintenance costs that kill an automation project. Also, you do not want to automate until you have reasonably stable code and decent test cases in place to help you build the automation. Test cases are your blue prints, and a house builder will not start construction until they have the blueprints from the architect. Do the same. Explain it to managment that way. It sounds to me like one of the tool vendors Marketing/Sales wonks got in there and did the "Automation is Automagic" B.S. I highly recommend reading James Bach's article "Test Automation Snake Oil" and anything Brett Pettichord has written on automation implementation. I will try to pull some economic / managment information / ammo together for you. I was just at the QAI Conference this last week and there were two excellent talks on the economics of Testing and how to relate it to Management. Give me a day or two to do this. Jim
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jimhazen
Member
Posts: 63
Registered: Jan 2002
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posted 10-27-2002 07:12 PM
CNote,Here is an article at StickyMinds.com that can be useful to you. The article is:
"The Cost of Software Quality
Investing in Software Testing Series, Part 1" by Rex Black. It has the economic information and calculations that can help you justify the cost of testing. Check it out. I will post some stuff from QAI in a couple of days. Keep plugging. Jim
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cnote
Member
Posts: 7
Registered: Aug 2002
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posted 10-28-2002 04:59 AM
Thank you Jim for your help. Once again I would lik to thank everyone for their input.------------------
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Chuckv
Member
Posts: 47
Registered: Sep 2002
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posted 10-30-2002 12:51 PM
Find a bug that nukes the database or zeros a table or three, or otherwise renders the sucker un-usable.... Go out of your way to do so if need be. Or if you can't do that, find something that just loads the sucker and brings it to it's knees so nobody can use it.Then after the DB is restored, repro it again few times (gotta be sure you got the steps right, and that it is reproducable, no?).. You'll get your own DB soon enough.  ------------------
A project without change control is by definition out of control
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jstrazzere
Moderator
Posts: 2134
Registered: May 2000
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posted 10-30-2002 01:38 PM
quote:
Originally posted by Chuckv:
Find a bug that nukes the database or zeros a table or three, or otherwise renders the sucker un-usable.... Go out of your way to do so if need be. Or if you can't do that, find something that just loads the sucker and brings it to it's knees so nobody can use it.Then after the DB is restored, repro it again few times (gotta be sure you got the steps right, and that it is reproducable, no?).. You'll get your own DB soon enough.
... or get fired instead. ------------------
- Joe (strazzerj@aol.com)
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