How do software development teams make sure the products they release are of high quality?
Not so long ago, a cynical answer to this question would have been something like, “Since when did software development teams care about quality?” It’s unfair, but it’s rooted in perceived quality issues from all types of development teams, from “lone wolf” contract developers to giant software conglomerates.
Software is complex stuff. Even relatively straightforward applications that do only a few things can have a dizzying number of possible “journeys” for users to take. Ideally, every one of those journeys is tested under all possible circumstances to ensure the software works as expected and doesn’t crash, pop-up useless error messages, or provide wrong answers.
If you’ve ever been using a piece of software that crashed or went into some catatonic state for no apparent reason, your first thought, probably, was “why didn’t they test this?” followed by some choice words for the developers.
An old metaphor, intended to explain the concept of “infinity,” states that an infinite number of monkeys, banging away at an infinite number of keyboards, would write code just as well as we humans can, with better commenting.
Some things are more art than science. And while software development is definitely a science, testing it has more than a few artistic aspects to the process. Dan Valderrama, QA Engineer at AndPlus, talks about the typical two-week sprint and how the company ensures a quality, shippable product at the end of it.
There is one surefire way to tell if you are dealing with an amateur app developer or a seasoned pro. The amateur will almost always insist that they can do all of their research, testing, and release of an app with a stellar user experience(UX) out of the gate, the first time.
