The subject of testing is if you’ll pardon the pun, a “testy” one. You can poll five different IT departments across the nation and you will get five different answers as to how much testing should be done in the application development process. The best answer to this conundrum is to have Continuous Testing of the application in development.
To understand this process, let’s take a look at the airline industry. Specifically, let’s take a look at the recent problems that have developed at Boeing with their 737 Max 8. After two similar plane crashes and the resultant similarities between the two, Boeing has had to ground all of their Max 8 aircraft. The problem that has plagued these planes is the software that was developed in relation to the flight of the aircraft. In both cases, the pilots were having problems with the software and fighting against the software overriding the pilots’ flight path.
Bugs in applications happen all the time and this is why testing is so important. Granted, you can’t get rid of all the bugs before launch, but continuous testing can get rid of any major ones. The Boeing example is a tragic one with the loss of life due to software problems.
A good testing program with regular testing cycles will keep things in check and improve the chances of a successful application release. Continuous testing is what you should achieve in development, no matter where the software will be used at launch.
