Classic Testing Mistakes
Brian Marick · 1997
this paper. First, it should identify the mistakes, put them in context, describe why they're mistakes, and suggest alternatives. Because the context of one mistake is usually prior mistakes, the paper is written in a narrative style rather than as a list that can be read in any order. Second, the paper should be a handy checklist of mistakes. For that reason, the classic mistakes are printed in a larger bold font when they appear in the text, and they're also summarized at the end. Although many of these mistakes apply to all types of software projects, my specific focus is the testing of commercial software products, not custom software or software that is safety critical or mission critical. This paper is essentially a series of bug reports for the testing process. You may think some of them are features, not bugs. You may disagree with the severities I assign. You may want more information to help in debugging, or want to volunteer information of your own. Any decent bug reporting system will treat the original bug report as the first part of a conversation. So should it be with this paper. Therefore, see http://www.stlabs.com/marick/classic.htm for an ongoing discussion of this topic. Theme One: The Role of Testing