In his recent posting Testing 2.0 at the Google Testing Blog, Anthony F. Voellm is discussing the evolution of testing. While some experts might believe, almost all research in testing already has been done, Voellm anticipates what he calls “Testing 2.0” . This evolution of testing could comprise aspects such as automation of complex decisions on quality issues.
The blog author is quoting the provocative keynote lecture “Test is Dead” Alberto Savaia, Director of Engineering and Innovation Agitator from Google, gave at the conference GTAC 2011. Actually, Voellm does not claim that testing is dead, but that the first chapter of testing (Testing 1.0) has already been closed:
A lot of the foundation of writing and testing great software has been laid … , which I think of as Testing 1.0. We all use Testing 1.0 day in and day out. In fact at Google, most of the developers (called Software Engineers or SWEs) do the basic Testing 1.0 work and we have a high bar on quality.
Currently, engineers are experiencing Testing 1.5:
This chapter is being written by computer scientists, applied scientists, engineers, developers, statisticians, and many other disciplines. These people come together in the Software Engineer in Test (SET) and Test Engineer (TE) roles at Google. SET/TEs focus on; developing software faster, building it better the first time, testing it in depth, releasing it quicker, and making sure it works in all environments.
According to Voellm, the next step could be Testing 2.0 which Google is already working on. It includes advanced aspects such as
- automating the complex decisions on quality issues that are currently conducted by human engineers,
- code quality predictions.