Tutorial - PRAGMATIC TESTING - WHAT TO DO WHEN YOUR WORLD IS MESSY
summary
Argues for pragmatic fixes in a messy world and shows concrete tools: root‑cause analysis using five whys, systems thinking with causal loops and named archetypes (limits to growth, shifting the burden, tragedy of the commons). Reports a small survey that yields a top five list of messiness (requirements, code quality, process, resources, organization). Recommends actionable tactics—quantify cost of rework (gets attention), TDD/CI and pair programming (faster feedback), but warns outsourcing or a central test center can remove capabilities or create resource contention.
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chapters (21)
- 0:00Start
- 0:01Pragmatic Testing What To Do When Your World Is Messy
- 2:33Typical Messiness and Possible Responses
- 5:36Lack of adequate requirements ⚫Lack of quality in developed code
- 7:15Potential solutions: - Quantify rework costs and make them
- 9:10Symptoms -Rework to add or correct
- 12:17Risk-based testing (both within and across projects) to do most important work first
- 15:45Discovering the Reasons for the Messiness
- 16:12You now have a long list of possible solutions for problems you face
- 19:03The problem is that no one in our community talks about contexts - what they are, and how to understand them
- 21:39Root cause analysis is a systematic investigation to discover the root (underlying) cause of a problem to guide process changes to prevent that problem from occurring again
- 22:44A process to explore cause/effect relationships as part of root cause analysis
- 23:22Problem: The application does not meet some of the users' needs
- 27:10The "Five Whys?" process does have some drawbacks
- 27:49A more complete approach is found in the discipline of General Systems Thinking
- 28:17Most people, most of the time, believe the world is a collection of linear cause and effect chains
- 47:20System Archetypes are specific behavioral patterns that occur again and again
- 49:07A process produces a period of accelerating growth. Then the growth begins to slow and eventually comes to a halt
- 52:18A fix, effective in the short term, has unforeseen consequences that require even more of the same fix
- 55:13A short-term solution is used to correct a problem with immediate, positive results. Over time, the capability to implement fundamental long-term solutions is diminished
- 59:05A "Shifting the Burden" structure in which short-term solutions abandon long-term goals
