Evolving Our Testing: Assessing Quality Throughout The SDLC

Talk Description

Imagine a world where testing was properly understood and invited throughout the full lifecycle of building software. A world where quality was not just perceived as “correctness” based on the software meeting the requirements. Imagine the state of the world if this was the case, with people relying more on complex software every day.

People expect high quality software, with quality being an accumulation of the goodness of the experience of using the software, the correctness of its operability, and the value they obtain from the software. In order to evolve the craft of testing to assess quality in line with this, we need to break out of the mindset that testing only relates to assessing the software.

In this talk, I will explain my view on testing, and its purpose of assessing quality, in line with my views of quality being beyond the correctness of the software. Additionally, I will illustrate the value of expanding testing activities throughout the entire software development life cycle:

• Testing ideas can prevent wasteful development and uncover risks.
• Testing designs and requirement artefacts can discover ambiguities and risks and prevent assumptions and waste.
• Testing architecture and code design can be the fastest possible feedback loop (much faster than test automation) on the quality of the code.
• That much of the output of all of the above testing can dramatically improve the quality of the testing we do when we test the software (improving both scripted and exploratory testing), from us using the risks we discover to better structure our testing.

There will be examples, there will be models, and there will be stories which I hope to excite and inspire you to reflect on and evolve your own testing towards that imagined world of really showing the true value of testing from assessing quality throughout the entire development lifecycle.

What you’ll learn

By the end of this talk, you'll be able to: