Reinventing the Testing Wheel (Object Oriented Testing)

I have been thinking about this one for some time and wondered what other views existed. For some time developers have taken a more modular approach to programming, applying techniques such as Object Oriented Design, in order to improve efficiency. Why re-invent the wheel each time a certain piece of code is required? Take something like a calculation of VAT. Once this has been written the first time, that should be enough and if stored and indexed correctly, each time someone else needs a VAT calculation they call a pre-written routine from a library. Not only does this mean that the developer does not spend valuable time writing the same code again, but also that the module should already have been tested and therefore be reliable, reducing the likelihood of errors.

This was seen as a major break through in the development world, but one which has not been replicated to my knowledge in the testing arena. When we write a manual test script, we write it in a manner which is long hand. So how many times have we written scripts to test VAT calculations? Why are we not creating a library of scripts that are re-usable by all testers? Why do we have to sit and think each time that we test a field: to understand what all the permutations are that we need to deal with, how to test it positively and negatively? There are hundreds of thousands of testers all over the world that are repeating the same thought processes, writing the same scripts, duplicating their efforts.

How many times has an input of a person's age been tested? What are all of the parameters? How old before they are at school, how old before they can hold a credit card, bank account, retire? All of these questions have been thought about so often, but we still religiously recreate them each time. So testers are accused of being too slow or not moving with the times, being overly expensive. Well I suppose when you look at something like this, the answer has to be, "Yes".

So when we are asked what the future may hold for testers, I put on my rose-tinted spectacles and imagine…..

I imagine a world where we are sharing our knowledge and expertise, generating a global testing community and capability. One where we are seen as slick operators, contributing massively to technology programmes the world over, with the minimum of input for the maximum return.

How does this happen? If there were a central repository for scripts to which every tester contributed, where we went as a first port of call to locate our script components, or store those components we have to create, we would quickly generate a wealth of stored expertise. A Wikipedia of test scripts – wow! We would need to be able to locate scripts in a fast and efficient manner and the database used to store the script components or objects would need to be referenced in a multitude of ways. But this is not new technology. Developers have been doing a lot of this for years and we can no doubt learn from the mistakes that they made along the way.

I would welcome comment on this. Is it feasible? How could it work? Am I barking mad? If you are a developer and have a story about OOD then share it and let us know if you think this is feasible. Drop me a line and let me know.