If you know someone is going to be constantly scrutinizing the system looking for defects, the temptation to skimp on the unit tests can become irresistible:
Hopefully, Bob will bring Ted to his senses and they'll write the unit tests first. The discussion could be avoided altogether if they weren't counting on John to eyeball the output of the module. It's amazing how good you imagine a manual tester is going to be when you're counting on his talents. Best case, it's approximately as good as you, the programmer, are when you look at the output from a module to find a particular defect. Maybe it would be this good if John were looking at just the one module, one time, for that particular defect. Now take that and spread it over all the modules, for every possible defect, over and over and over again, and you have a realistic idea of what you can actually count on from John. |