Why Different Types of Tests? — Ignite Talk

In this Ignite Talk, Gene Gotimer talks about why different types of tests are important in the delivery pipeline.

Testing is a means to an end. We only test because we want to learn something about the software we are building, and we want to learn at a point in our pipeline when we can react to that information. Since we can’t do everything first, we at least want to test when there is still a chance to fix problems we find. If we get rapid feedback, we can make a change to fix problems and push the code back through our pipeline. If those problems are design issues, we don’t want to have invested so much into the software that we can’t go back and fix the design, possibly undoing other work that we’ve done. We want to balance early rapid feedback with avoiding late surprises.

Gene talks about many types of tests, pointing out what we hope to learn from each and what we will do if we find a problem.

An Ignite Talk consists of 20 slides auto-advancing every 15 seconds.