Extreme Quality

This page is about the role of QA in an XP development. There are many unanswered questions about this on ExtremeProgrammingChallengeTwentyTwo, but it seems many of the traditional QA responsibilities - writing UnitTests and reviewing the fitness of requirements - have been assumed by the developers themselves. SpecializationIsForInsects, after all. So what's left for a QA department to do?

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• Perhaps AcceptanceTesting if RJ ever makes this clear on XPC22 ...
• End-to-end testing, certainly. QA can set up all kinds of deployment models and test them.
• Anything with a large hardware component can't rely on QA for that, and also needs significant QA.
• Organizational QA; using ISO 9001 to assure process.
• Education: the testing mindset, how to know what tests to write, etc.
• Review of the developer-written tests.
• Writing UnitTests for legacy code to prepare it for further development.
• Others?

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But AcceptanceTesting is end-to-end testing.

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QA is needed only as long as the error rates in delivered software remain high. If the rates become low, QA doing another level of testing becomes impractical. -- WayneMack

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Speaking of this, does anyone have any specific data on how many defects are found by the customers in software that has been developed according to all XP practices? How many defects are found per month? How many defects per KLOC are found in the project lifetime? -- DmitryJemerov

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DavidPutman, WorkshareTechnology? (UK) has started a new mailing list for ExtremeQualityManagement?. Sign up at Topica http://www.topica.com/lists/xqm

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CategoryQuality