Software test reality and ideals
Author: Wang Yu
Sending time: 2003.11.18
Source: China Computer News
"From my experience in Microsoft, the software test is definitely not the end of the development activities. Many large development projects will occupy more than half of the project cycle. Take IE4.0 as an example, code development time is 6 months, and the stable program spent 8 months. "Former Microsoft Asian Research Institute, Dr. Chen Honggang, Software Test Experts. From the perspective of investment capital and human material, the test allows the product to stabilize and modify the time to take 80%.
Infancy
Software testing is relatively slow, one reason is to do the opportunity to study and do people with people exchanges. Only those who do large system engineering will provide higher requirements for testing, and the importance can appear, and those who do research and teaching have no large system engineering cases, so it has caused the development of test theory lack of enormous basic materials. Engineers who truly do large system development do not have time to turn first-hand test experience into the system theory.
"In the United States, Florida and Washington, there is a university to open software test courses. There are not many schools with formal courses. Software test is staying in a discipline system, there is no system education. Although there is already a school opened this Course, but used by teaching cases, most of them are single software, but also not talking about the theory of the system. "Dr. Chen Honggang said.
High-quality "miscellaneous army"
Since the company has an urgent need for test talents, I have to cultivate the test talent team. For example, Microsoft has formulated test specifications for different products, and some courses are opened, and the test technicians are trained through the form of lectures, but they have not yet formed the system theory.
Even in Microsoft, the test team is a typical "miscellaneous army". There is no department, there is no unified professional, more is a rich experience and employees in different industries, such as linguistics, mathematics, physics, computer, engineering , Employees such as management and other contexts. However, this is not to say anyone can do test work, and Chen Hong has worked in that laboratory, and seven doctors in 20 people. It can be seen that although the test is not a special discipline, this department is a crucial department of a mature software company.
Cognition needs to increase
IBM and Microsoft companies are leading big companies, and have experienced a process for testing. At the beginning, it is also a part-time job test, just like some smaller software companies in China. However, the subsequent results show that the cost of spending the software is too high, so far exceeding the range that can be allowed. At this time, increase the scale of the test team, improve the quality of the test team, and improve the treatment team's treatment and the level of attention is more cost-effective.
There is also a question is that many engineers are reluctant to do testing, thinking is a kind of work, no future, this is also a problem with large software companies in China. Therefore, the company is generally consciously and unconsciously paying attention to technology, does not pay attention to the quality, and the consequence is that the product is not high in the market, and the product after-sales maintenance and service cost are high.
Huge contrast
The proportion of Microsoft's development engineers and test engineers is 1: 2, and the domestic general company is 6:1. Moreover, fatal problems are no institutions specializing in training test engineers. This contradictory reminds us that when China does not wait until the actual needs and the contradiction of human resources is very sharp, repeat the training problem; and can not wait until the quality of product quality has become an industrial obstacle to improve the test level of the software industry. Testing work cannot be done by manual labor. More situations are to be done using tool software and writing test programs. Cultivating comprehensive testing professionals is a heavy work.
