Sunday, June 30, 2002

It Takes Longer to Test When There Are Defects Well, duh! But I'm thinking more along the lines of presenting time/effort estimates of the testing process to project management. If it takes 10 minutes to run a test case from scratch to completion, and there are 6 test cases, then it will take 1 hour to run all the test cases. If there are no defects found. Let's say that it takes 20 minutes to write up a bug, and between 5-20 minutes to research it. Severe bugs take 2x time (on average), and trivial bugs take .5x time. So, using these made-up numbers, each trivial bug found adds 20 minutes to the total test time, each average bug adds 40 minutes, and each severe bug adds 80 minutes. [A QA Guy's Radio Weblog] Good point.  This is also one (perhaps frequently overlooked) component of the increased cost of finding bugs later in the development process.  Maybe it helps justify other non-testing-related QA processes (like code inspections) to project management as well. 2:24:55 PM    comment []

Say it Loud, Say it Proud! Those who have read Adam Nathan's excellent book on .NET Interop know that it is the most authoritative and comprehensive book on the subject.  What most people may not realize is that Adam is not a program manager or developer or a technical writer.  His is a QA guy. When I think about it, many of the skills that make a good tester also make a good technical author.  These include: curiosity about how things work, strong domain knowledge, and good communication skills.   (I'm just surprised Adam had time enough to do both...) 2:04:49 PM    comment []