Article Review: How Software Company Evaluates Its Software?
Software evaluation is a process of assessing with criteria, whether or not software is functional, usable, and designed well. In fact, there is no one linear way to evaluate software. Each company has its own way of evaluating software from hiring testers to using crowd sourcing or developers themselves test the software. The article highlights how big tech companies like Google, Facebook, and Microsoft practice software evaluation and testing.
What makes the article Interesting
The article encapsulates the different perspective of software evaluation process of individual companies.
Google’s approach mixes between a developer and selected individuals to test and try out their products. Google believes that testing should be embedded in every stage of the development cycle starts from developer testing, unit testing all the way up to the system testing which is handled by the testers.
Ex-Google director James Whittaker mentioned about the quality of the product should be start from the beginning of the process as “We can’t build the product and paint quality on top of it”.
On the other hand, Facebook’s approach relies solely on “Developer-driven Testing”. This approach utilizes automated software testing as well as internal testing with minimal reliance on testers but more on the ones developing the software.
Another interesting point in the article is how it looks at it from the organizational standpoint. For example, some companies like Facebook don’t hire testers instead relies on the developers to test each other’s works. In contrast, companies like Spotify prefer a more hierarchical organizational approach when it comes to testing have squads, tribes, and chapters to promote familial teamwork and camaraderie between testers and developers.
What we can learn from the article
The followings are some key takeaways from the article.
1. Before releasing software to the customer, company internal staffs try out their own software to demonstrate the confidence in their products and promote the testimonial advertising.
2. Although some companies have dedicated testers for quality assurance, engineers and developers must also take responsibilities of their works.
3. Automated testing tools are widely used to increase the effectiveness, efficiency, and coverage of the software testing.
4. The software improvement and new upcoming features are based on the software usage activities and user feedbacks.
5. Lastly, the software testing processes of the companies can be varied thus there is no one right way of evaluating the software efforts. In fact, the organization should choose the software evaluation method which fits the best for its culture and practices.
Furthermore, if you want to have a more insightful understanding of how one of the tech giant company (Microsoft) tests its software, this book is worth reading.
Thank you for reading. :)
