Is Agile Appropriate? To Denote Deeper Lifecycle Presence for Testing

By SiliconIndia | Tuesday, 31 January 2012, 05:24 Hrs

Analyst company's words of advice reiterated by Unit testers:

Typemock an Israeli unit-testing company has pointed to the increasing popularity of Agile software application development practices as a key driver for testing technologies in the years ahead. According to Dr. Dobbs Blog, comments from Typemock's CEO Eli Lopian, (known for his "well he would say that" stance with regards to testing) on Prompt releases, Functional quality and Mission-critical apps have some extra weight.

Forrester analysts Margo Visitacion and Mike Gualtieri's "Functional Testing Tools Are Not Enough" report stated that, "Now it is time for quality management and testing to respond to [this] faster-moving environment. Functional testing tools are scanty. Quality must move beyond the purview of just the testing organization and must become an integrated part of the entire software development life cycle (SDLC) to reduce 'schedule-killing' rework, improve user satisfaction, and reduce the risks of untested non-functional requirements such as security and performance."

Typemock makes another play to "add two and two to make five" by also pointing to another recent Forrester report, which recommended that developers engage in automated testing, including unit testing, in order to build higher quality software. Kevlin Henney, coauthor of several software architecture and programming practice books, was interviewed by the company on his predictions for the upcoming year, commenting that there will be an "increased acceptance of unit testing and techniques surrounding it, particularly in domains where it has been considered off the menu."

"Unit testing is like staying healthy" Lopian argued. He said "Staying healthy requires best practices such as eating right and working out. Likewise, development teams need the right practices in order to innovate faster. Just as it's hard to start working out, many find it's hard to unit test and thus stop - despite its well-known benefits. This is why Typemock's vision has always been providing easy unit-testing tools for agile software developers to release better software, even with legacy code."

Corey Haines, self-proclaimed "software journeyman" and cofounder of Code Retreat, had this to say on the subject of automated unit testing: "Honestly, I see more of the same. Lots of people exposed to it for the first time. Lots of people trying it, finding it hard, and then saying it doesn't work. Lots of people are trying it, finding it hard, keeping with it and seeing benefits over the years."