Taking Testing Seriously

CHAPTER 11Adventures in Testability

—By Janna Loeffler

What is testability? You could probably ask 10 different testers and get 9 different answers. For me, I say the real question is: “How can we make this product easier to test?” It's a simple, broad way to think about testability.

At conferences, talks on testability often reduce it to having developers add identifiers into their code to make it easier to write some automated checks. That has never sat well with me. Sure, having developers add identifiers into the code helps with automation, but does it help with any other aspect of testing? Maybe a little. If I can write some automation to help do some shallow checks, that frees up more time for me to test. But there is so much more to it. Testability isn't one thing—it's about all the things that help me test and make testing more efficient or effective.

What are those things? Let's talk about that.

I remember the first time I ever heard about Rapid Software Testing. It was at a conference where Michael Bolton gave a talk called “A Ridiculously Rapid Introduction to Rapid Software Testing.” That's when I started thinking out of the box when it came to testing. Michael spoke about how sometimes, even when you feel like you can't test one thing, there are always other things you can test. Even if you can't test the product itself, you can test documentation, something similar to the product, or even people’s thoughts about the product.

After taking a Rapid Software Testing ...