chumster · February 11, 2014 23:09
diff --git a/gistfile1.txt b/gistfile1.txt
 Google’s approach is more than a little counterintuitive: We have fewer dedicated testers in our entire company than many of our competitors have on a single product team. Google Test is no million-man army. We are small and elite Special Forces that have to depend on superior tactics and advanced weaponry to stand a fighting chance at success. As with military Special Forces, it is this scarcity of resources that forms the base of our secret sauce. The absence of plenty forces us to get good at prioritizing, or as Larry Page puts it: “Scarcity brings clarity.” From features to test techniques, we’ve learned to create high impact, low-drag activities in our pursuit of quality. Scarcity also makes testing resources highly valued, and thus, well regarded, keeping smart people actively and energetically involved in the discipline. The first piece of advice I give people when they ask for the keys to our success: Don’t hire too many testers.

 How does Google get by with such small ranks of test folks? If I had to put it simply, I would say that at Google, the burden of quality is on the shoulders of those writing the code. Quality is never “some tester’s” problem. Everyone who writes code at Google is a tester, and quality is literally the problem of this collective. Talking about dev to test ratios at Google is like talking about air quality on the surface of the sun. It’s not a concept that even makes sense. If you are an engineer, you are a tester. If you are an engineer with the word test in your title, then you are an enabler of good testing for those other engineers who do not.

 And further, from the introduction:

 Quality ≠ Test “Quality cannot be tested in” is so cliché it has to be true. From automobiles to software, if it isn’t built right in the first place, then it is never going to be right. Ask any car company that has ever had to do a mass recall how expensive it is to bolt on quality after the fact. Get it right from the beginning or you’ve created a permanent mess. However, this is neither as simple nor as accurate as it sounds. Although it is true that quality cannot be tested in, it is equally evident that without testing, it is impossible to develop anything of quality. How does one decide if what you built is high quality without testing it? The simple solution to this conundrum is to stop treating development and test as separate disciplines. Testing and development go hand in hand. Code a little and test what you built. Then code some more and test some more. Test isn’t a separate practice; it’s part and parcel of the development process itself. Quality is not equal to test. Quality is achieved by putting development and testing into a blender and mixing them until one is indistinguishable from the other. Quality is not equal to test. Quality is achieved by putting development and testing into a blender and mixing them until one is indistinguishable from the other. At Google, this is exactly our goal: to merge development and testing so that you cannot do one without the other. Build a little and then test it. Build some more and test some more. The key here is who is doing the testing. Because the number of actual dedicated testers at Google is so disproportionately low, the only possible answer has to be the developer. Who better to do all that testing than the people doing the actual coding? Who better to find the bug than the person who wrote it? Who is more incentivized to avoid writing the bug in the first place? The reason Google can get by with so few dedicated testers is because developers own quality. If a product breaks in the field, the first point of escalation is the developer who created the problem, not the tester who didn’t catch it. This means that quality is more an act of prevention than it is detection. Quality is a development issue, not a testing issue. To the extent that we are able to embed testing practice inside development, we have created a process that is hyper-incremental where mistakes can be rolled back if any one increment turns out to be too buggy. We’ve not only prevented a lot of customer issues, we have greatly reduced the number of dedicated testers necessary to ensure the absence of recall-class bugs. At Google, testing is aimed at determining how well this prevention method works. Manifestations of this blending of development and testing are inseparable from the Google development mindset, from code review notes asking “where are your tests?” to posters in the bathrooms reminding developers about best-testing practices. 3 Testing must be an unavoidable aspect of development, and the marriage of development and testing is where quality is achieved. Testing must be an unavoidable aspect of development, and the marriage of development and testing is where quality is achieved.

 Whittaker, James A.; Arbon, Jason; Carollo, Jeff (2012-03-21). How Google Tests Software (Kindle Locations 522-530). Pearson Education. Kindle Edition.
	Google’s approach is more than a little counterintuitive: We have fewer dedicated testers in our entire company than many of our competitors have on a single product team. Google Test is no million-man army. We are small and elite Special Forces that have to depend on superior tactics and advanced weaponry to stand a fighting chance at success. As with military Special Forces, it is this scarcity of resources that forms the base of our secret sauce. The absence of plenty forces us to get good at prioritizing, or as Larry Page puts it: “Scarcity brings clarity.” From features to test techniques, we’ve learned to create high impact, low-drag activities in our pursuit of quality. Scarcity also makes testing resources highly valued, and thus, well regarded, keeping smart people actively and energetically involved in the discipline. The first piece of advice I give people when they ask for the keys to our success: Don’t hire too many testers.

	How does Google get by with such small ranks of test folks? If I had to put it simply, I would say that at Google, the burden of quality is on the shoulders of those writing the code. Quality is never “some tester’s” problem. Everyone who writes code at Google is a tester, and quality is literally the problem of this collective. Talking about dev to test ratios at Google is like talking about air quality on the surface of the sun. It’s not a concept that even makes sense. If you are an engineer, you are a tester. If you are an engineer with the word test in your title, then you are an enabler of good testing for those other engineers who do not.

	And further, from the introduction:

	Quality ≠ Test “Quality cannot be tested in” is so cliché it has to be true. From automobiles to software, if it isn’t built right in the first place, then it is never going to be right. Ask any car company that has ever had to do a mass recall how expensive it is to bolt on quality after the fact. Get it right from the beginning or you’ve created a permanent mess. However, this is neither as simple nor as accurate as it sounds. Although it is true that quality cannot be tested in, it is equally evident that without testing, it is impossible to develop anything of quality. How does one decide if what you built is high quality without testing it? The simple solution to this conundrum is to stop treating development and test as separate disciplines. Testing and development go hand in hand. Code a little and test what you built. Then code some more and test some more. Test isn’t a separate practice; it’s part and parcel of the development process itself. Quality is not equal to test. Quality is achieved by putting development and testing into a blender and mixing them until one is indistinguishable from the other. Quality is not equal to test. Quality is achieved by putting development and testing into a blender and mixing them until one is indistinguishable from the other. At Google, this is exactly our goal: to merge development and testing so that you cannot do one without the other. Build a little and then test it. Build some more and test some more. The key here is who is doing the testing. Because the number of actual dedicated testers at Google is so disproportionately low, the only possible answer has to be the developer. Who better to do all that testing than the people doing the actual coding? Who better to find the bug than the person who wrote it? Who is more incentivized to avoid writing the bug in the first place? The reason Google can get by with so few dedicated testers is because developers own quality. If a product breaks in the field, the first point of escalation is the developer who created the problem, not the tester who didn’t catch it. This means that quality is more an act of prevention than it is detection. Quality is a development issue, not a testing issue. To the extent that we are able to embed testing practice inside development, we have created a process that is hyper-incremental where mistakes can be rolled back if any one increment turns out to be too buggy. We’ve not only prevented a lot of customer issues, we have greatly reduced the number of dedicated testers necessary to ensure the absence of recall-class bugs. At Google, testing is aimed at determining how well this prevention method works. Manifestations of this blending of development and testing are inseparable from the Google development mindset, from code review notes asking “where are your tests?” to posters in the bathrooms reminding developers about best-testing practices. 3 Testing must be an unavoidable aspect of development, and the marriage of development and testing is where quality is achieved. Testing must be an unavoidable aspect of development, and the marriage of development and testing is where quality is achieved.

	Whittaker, James A.; Arbon, Jason; Carollo, Jeff (2012-03-21). How Google Tests Software (Kindle Locations 522-530). Pearson Education. Kindle Edition.