The Relevance of Testing

Several days before the launch, the designers performed a very pragmatic stability test on the Vasathey had 30 sailors run from one side of the boat to the other and back. After three iterations, they had to stop because the boat was heeling over too much. The test was a dismal failure.

However, the king was out of the country at the time, and no one else dared postpone the launch. The rest, as they say, is history.

Ironically, the notion that you can "test in" quality in software is equally fallacious. Once the boat (or software) is built, testing can only characterize what is there. On the other hand, if it is possible to do tests early and often, one can detect flaws that may be corrected in time. In this case, it is unlikely that this would have been possible. On the other hand, in most software development projects, early testing should be de rigueur as part of the iterative development process.