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Andre Leroux's avatar

I remember 2016 and "Testing is Dead" buzz. I was managing a big group of testers and we were hiring like crazy. My staff was worried but I re-assured them that we were so far from the reality of these big tech companies. They have enough developpers, have a big attraction to hire good developpers and are not in high critical business line.

In my company, we are in the physical security industry and like in aeronautics or health; failures can have dramatical consequences. We could not just rely on going all automated testing. That can definitively be a good option for anyone offering online services or extending their stores to shop online; but not our business.

Furthermore, small to medium tech companies often struggle to have a good pool of software developpers; they need to stay competitive in the market and will keep their developpers on creating features for added value, leaving testing to "testers". I've often heard "when we will have time, we will automate all tests", but they never have time because leadership is always pushing them to create value while testers are doing a "good" job. It doesn't mean we are not implementing/improving test automation, but not as fast as we would like.

I totally agree that testing is a "craft"! As we are pushing more and more in Cloud Applications at my company, they've tried going without testers only to learn Software Developpers are far from being good testers, even with some coaching. Testers are back, and Quality/testing practices are enforced.

Thanks Alessandra for your excellent posts!!!

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Vlada's avatar

I really liked the "What Actually Died? Bad Testing" part — it’s so true. Some companies still proudly display green bars on dashboards, and that’s it. It’s actually a pity when a team isn’t open to new ideas or improvements.

On one of my projects, I suggested a new implementation, and another QA responded with: "Why do you need that? Does it work? Yes? Then don’t change anything, just skip it."

I was honestly shocked by that mindset.

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