Surviving the Top Ten Challenges of Software Testing: A People-Oriented Approach

Chapter Six. Challenge #7: Explaining Testing To Managers

Overview

With all of the other system activities competing for management’s attention, testing has never traditionally ranked high on management’s list of interests or priorities. To some, testing is seen as a trivial activity that is performed at the end of a project “just to make sure everything works,” as if there is no doubt that the system will work as expected from day one. To others, testing is an intimidating task that only experts can understand.

The truth is that testing should be an integral part of building and deploying information systems. Testing does not need to be complex and difficult to be effective. Most people can be trained to be very good testers, whether they ...