Article archive
The Test Lead was removed from release calls, test channels and scope decisions but left on the organisation chart. Months later, an assurance review found that regression and performance testing had stopped. Management asked why the Test Lead had allowed it. Authority had been removed. Accountability remained fully backwards compatible.
The security team issued a green report stating clearly that functional and performance testing were outside its scope. Delivery removed the word security from the heading and presented it as independent assurance. When the service failed under load, testing was asked why it had signed off the release. The scope never expanded. The heading did.
The service was declared stable because incident numbers had fallen. Operations had built spreadsheets, manual checks and a rota to catch stuck claims before customers noticed. Those failures were not counted as incidents because staff fixed them first. When testing challenged the stability claim, Delivery pointed to the falling incident count. The system became stable […]
The test environment failed every afternoon and regularly lost data overnight. Delivery said its failures were irrelevant because production would be more stable. Production launched, failed in the same places and began losing live claims overnight.
A Delivery Manager asked us to mark four failed tests as passed because the defects had been accepted for release. I explained that accepting a defect changes the release decision, not the test result. He said the dashboard needed to reflect the agreed position. The agreed position was that red should become green without the […]
The programme report said functional, regression and performance testing remained fully resourced. In reality, every tester had been reassigned to create accounts and test data for the security team. When I asked who was checking new features, I was told the developers demonstrated them. The test team still existed, which was apparently close enough to […]
A developer demonstrated a new claims feature using one prepared customer and the exact sequence of clicks he had built it for. The business owner watched it work once. Delivery recorded functional testing as complete. The first real claimant changed an earlier answer and lost every uploaded document. The demonstration proved that the developer knew […]
The Delivery Manager appointed a penetration-testing specialist to lead functional, regression, performance and security assurance. The specialist had clearly stated that his expertise was penetration testing. The Delivery Manager said good people could operate across boundaries. Mr Fuckhead had hired someone who knew how to break in, not whether the service worked.
I asked what functional testing remained after the test team was reorganised. New features were being demonstrated by the developers who built them. “Who independently validates them?” I asked. The tester paused. “That appears to be the demonstration.” The programme had replaced testing with developers showing each other that their own work looked fine.
The performance testers asked how many people the national claims portal needed to support. The answers included: National scale. Significant demand. As many users as necessary. More than the old service. The performance requirement was eventually confirmed as “a lot.”