Software testing and software testers are too often misunderstood by the people around us.
So we asked the software testing community what they thought the misconceptions were. We gathered responses from Twitter, LinkedIn and Slack.
Below are the most relevant answers. Feel free to chime in with your thoughts! What have we missed?
Misconceptions that exist within software testing
That the people who do it, only do it because they couldn’t cut it as a [dev, BA, PM, etc] - Jeff Poulin
That it’s just trying to “break the system” - Jeff Poulin
That automation is making it irrelevant - Jeff Poulin
That automation is not real dev work. - Anita Squires
Anyone can test! That is easy - Sangeetha
Testing is “trying to break the system” - Sangeetha
Testers are only useful after the product is built. - Anita Squires
“There is no large career perspective” - Emma Ayadi
Testing is boring and repetitive
- Rachel McCash
People with the job title “tester” are the only ones who do the activity of testing. - Ben Fellows
You should’ve caught that bug before it reached production - Will Ellis
That automation will find bugs - Mike Ruttenberg
Everything can (and should be) be automated - Mike Ruttenberg
That exploratory testing is not required any more - Mike Ruttenberg
That testers can assure quality. I’ll bring my insurance salesman’s suitcase, shall I? - Mike Ruttenberg
That’s a back end change, it doesn’t need testing - Will Ellis
Automation replaces manual testers
- Julius King Chua
Good testing practices decrease velocity - Kylee Tilley
It is mainly a career stepstone for becoming a developer. - Christian Kram
“Hurr Durr anyone can do it”
- Michael Fritzius
Developers shouldn’t test! - David Williams
There are none. - Santhosh Tuppad
Testers know how to test. (without having the knowledge). - Srinivas Kadiyala
Test must be separated from development / testing is not so valuable then development
- Sven Schirmer
No one will ever do that. - Stephan Kämper
An address is easy to test. - Stephan Kämper
EVERYTHING can be automated and testers will be out of a job. - Mo
A script is only testing something from A to Z and should only take minutes to complete
- Ben
Open source test automation tools have all the same functionality as licensed tools. - Paul Grossman
It’s not as important as the rest of the jobs. - Russell Johnston
Exploratory testing doesnt need strategy - SetsunidoAnimal
Testers need to write test cases… - Jan
Back in the day, people had to be ISTQB qualified to know what they’re doing - Ben
Or IIST certified. - Paul Grossman
When we complete templates, we are professionally testing software
Good testing gives good quality. - Ronnie Østgaard
The labor quotient for every automation tool is the same. - PerfBytes
Testing makes us slower. - Johan Abildskov
Automation is time consuming, why do it. - Larry G
Manual testing is dead - Marie Drake
Test code may be as ugly as hell - as long as the tests run, everything is just fine. - Pascal Gugenberger
That it “only” takes a short period of time. - MC BriefKace
“Software in production has usually been thoroughly tested.” - Florian Schimdt
We need to repeat the same 3,487 tests over and over to ensure that we didn’t break anything. - Robert Strauch
Testing a product after it’s built ensures a quality product. - Carolyn Newham
Testing your own work is just as good having someone else take a pass. - Barbara Allen Hill
A test case should only test one thing. - Dave Martin
“Doesn’t matter if testing can’t be done before sprint end, we can deploy toggled off so we’ve still met the sprint goals!” Alas I have heard this said in all seriousness in several different organisations - Rachel Denyer
Every escaped bug had a missing test case … the default root cause
- SumaCotha
Testing is an activity to ensure quality and catch all the things that were missed during development (like they are somehow mutually exclusive) regardless of how long is allocated to it. - Matt Brown
More testers == more quality - Kris Raven
Testers test - Thiago Grespi
With tool ‘X,’ any business analyst can do the job of a mature quality assurance practitioner. - PerfBytes
Only testers have to do it. - Marie
We can just cut the testing short at the end of the sprint. No worries…
- Nick Roberts
Shamless plug
- Gaurav Singh
Any tester can test any application. Testers are inter changeable. - Irena
Only Testers are responsible for quality! - Sonal Sharma
We just click buttons
- Richard Forjoe
Having skilled testers to test aren’t needed. Developers and Business Analysts can do it. - Jeff MacBane
Biggest one - Testers are gatekeepers for Quality. - Prashant Hegde
That we are: Failed developers, bottlenecks, are only there to find bugs. - Adam Bardell
It’s not a team skill - Aj WIlson
100% test automation is possible - Louise Gibbs
Testing is done at the end of development. - Shafiq Ahmed
Zero bugs. - Vanessa Horacio
Automation guarantees 100% test coverage and is easy to do! - Andrew Shaw
“Testing fixes bugs” - no, it exposes them. - Dave Smith
“Testing breaks stuff” - no, it breaks your ILLUSION of stuff. - Dave Smith
“We can’t test until it’s built” - False. Test early, test often. - Dave Smith
“Testing delays releases” - kinda true… but I don’t see why testing should be blamed for finding the show-stopper that’s caused a release freeze. I’d blame them for the reverse: NOT finding it and letting it go into production. - Dave Smith
Last one: “we don’t do testing because we expect our engineers to develop high-quality code” - Dave Smith
That it is a waste of money. - Mark Fortune
Performance testing adds no value and you just click a button. - Mike Lilley
Non functional requirements don’t need to be measurable. The application just has to “feel” fast enough. - Mike Lilley
Performance testing has to be left until the end of the testing cycle. - Mike Lilley
Performance testers always load the application unrealistically. - Mike Lilley
They always try to block applications going live. - Mike Lilley
Performance testers don’t need requirements, data or capable infrastructure. - Mike Lilley
That testers in the video game industry just play games for a living. - Kevin Smale
And in addition to that: Testers from the video games industry cannot compete in other industries. - Jan Tschöpe
As you don’t have enough skills to become a developer, you choose testing as your career. - Geetha Poluri
Testing = Checking and checking is all you need. - Inti Florez-Brandel
Testers can only do testing, and can’t contribute in the technical discussions . Personally experienced
Automated testing is better than manual testing, and automated testing tools are a sound testing strategy that keeps testing costs low. - Faisal Humayun
You need qualifications to be a tester - John Stoddart