1.7 Categorizing Pitfalls
Many testing pitfalls can occur during the development or maintenance of software-reliant systems and software applications. While no project is likely to be so poorly managed and executed as to experience the majority of these pitfalls, most projects will suffer several of them. Similarly, although these testing pitfalls do not guarantee failure, they definitely pose serious risks that need to be managed.
This book documents 92 pitfalls that have been observed to commonly occur during testing. These pitfalls are categorized as follows:
General Testing Pitfalls
- Test Planning and Scheduling Pitfalls
- Stakeholder Involvement and Commitment Pitfalls
- Management-Related Testing Pitfalls
- Staffing Pitfalls
- Test Process Pitfalls
- Test Tools and Environments Pitfalls
- Test Communication Pitfalls
- Requirements-Related Testing Pitfalls
Test-Type-Specific Pitfalls
- Unit Testing Pitfalls
- Integration Testing Pitfalls
- Specialty Engineering Testing Pitfalls
- System Testing Pitfalls
- System of Systems (SoS) Testing Pitfalls
- Regression Testing Pitfalls
Although each of these testing pitfalls has been observed on multiple projects, it is entirely possible that you might have testing pitfalls that are not addressed by this document. Please notify me of any new testing pitfalls you stumble across or any additional recommended changes to the current pitfalls so that I can incorporate them into future editions of this book.