There’s a lot of talk and push for not doing Software Testing post-development. This is done because testing is considered as a ‘blocking’ factor in the DevOps and CI/CD pipeline. In replacing Software Testing, what is being offered is ‘Exploratory Testing’ and automation. We need to talk a bit about these alternatives and look at why they are insufficient.
Exploratory Testing
When people consider ‘exploratory testing’, with the amount of pressure they have to get it done with testing, they do a cursory check. This is traditionally called ‘smoke check‘ and this is not proper testing. Without proper testing, software has many risks built-in when it goes out to the customers.
Automation
We automate what we know of and what we could. But that’s only very tiny piece of the possibilities that the software will face in the real world. Humans have the ability to test and try to find out what they don’t know of, and that’s what makes them valuable for testing.
In matters of Software Testing, what enamors us is not what we know, but what we don’t know.
And that’s why, just automation is not sufficient.
So, just cursory checks and automation are not sufficient as good testing. Let’s get serious about testing and get it done in a way that it should be.
I’ll write more on this.