My Favourite Quotes from Jerry Weinberg's book on "Perfect Software And Other Illusions about Testing"

Today, 27th October, is the birth anniversary of Jerry Weinberg.

When I read one of his books called "Perfect Software and other illusions about Testing", I was amazed at how he conveyed critical insights in an easy to understand way. I enjoyed the examples in the book and learnt a lot from it.

Today, I would like to pay tribute to Jerry Weinberg by mentioning some of my favourite quotes from this book:

  • Good testing involves balancing the need to mitigate risk against the risk of trying to gather too much information
  • Testing may convincingly demonstrate the presence of bugs, but can never demonstrate their absence
  • Testing is, at best, sampling
  • A diverse sample might find more problems than a large sample. Likewise, diversifying your test team might find more problems than enlarging your test team
  • If you blame messengers for bringing news you don't want to hear, you'll be rewarded by not hearing the news you should hear
  • Quality is a product of the entire development process. Poor testing can lead to poor quality, but good testing won't lead to good quality unless all other parts of the process are in place and performed properly
  • Testing a system is a process of gathering information about it with the intent that the information could be used for some purpose
  • Controlling the growth of requirements is made even more difficult because it requires that a decision-maker or stakeholder distinguish between something that really is necessary to the product versus something that would have value but whose value isn't worth the additional cost and risk

These are just few of the many insightful points and topics covered in the book. I do recommend giving it a read!