The Tax Man





Deliver Measurable Value



CEO: So, what have you done this week?

You: Well, I ran a bunch of tests.



[Cricket sounds]


CEO: So, what have you done this week?

You: I prevented thousands of dollars in revenue loss.

CEO: Pray tell, how did you to this?


CEO: I see. Tell me more about your ideas.


Be Flexible





Be Data-driven







2 Responses

  1. It’s a common sentiment but incorrect to say “if you don’t find new bugs, you’re not adding value.”
    TIP and analytics are great, but you still have to ensure that the business logic works correctly. To do that, you need well-written checks, and you need to run them often, and lack of new bugs is itself a significant value to the project.
    “Check” is a more accurate way of describing a test that is automated, because if you take a manual test and automate it, the value changes radically from the original test. A person running a test sees many things that would be missed if the test were automated.
    If you don’t run checks, you don’t know if your business logic still works correctly with the last change set in the code, and that’s risky. To avoid the risk you need a good set of well-written checks and you need to run them often. Mostly the checks won’t find bugs, but they have very significant value.
    See MetaAutomation for more information on this (blog, and book to publish this summer)

  2. I don’t disagree. The point is that you should be able to articulate _why_ you’re running the test and _why_ the test has value. To do this, you have to be able to articulate the cost of running the test versus the cost of failure. (We covered this in an earlier entry on this blog back in February.)

    If you’re running a test that hasn’t found a bug since 1974 _but_ that test proves that the world be plunged into anew Ice Age following your latest dev checkin then you’re providing value– and you should be able to say so.

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