Thursday 15 October 2015

Black box testing - FAIL



Unless you've just arrived to planet Earth from some other galaxy you cannot have missed the biggest news story in software this year - and perhaps also this decade. VW's "cheat software" that made the emission tests from various diesel engine models behave differently when they went through the US EPA emission tests - only to behave differently once they were driven by the right foot of real people.

No matter who decided what, who knew what - and who did what -the implications from a software testing perspective are interesting. First of all this is a signal to everybody about not trusting what's inside "the box". If you work professionally with test, software audit or other types of certification jobs where software is included the black box testing activities must undergo increased scrutiny.

A much more focused approach to the vendors black box testing activities should be the result of this event and a much better understanding of the tests and results should be the outcome. It is of course not possible to have completely transparent white box testing activities all the way through the development process and even it was the feasibility of looking over the shoulder is not really an option.

One simple learning is to limit the re-use of test cases. Make sure that the test is flexible within certain boundaries. Secondly do not rely on tests that are known by test vendor - and definitely not too much on test cases from their black box testing activities.

Instead, when you are involved in FAT and SAT activities your main goal should be to understand the testing scope of your vendor and challenge that with your own black box test cases. A further approach should be to have a team of skilled testers and end users involved in exploratory testing - a set of planned and focused activities with the vendors software prior to accepting delivery.

VW is presumably not the only company where the content of the box is different than expected and the motivation for spending extra time and resources is now forever embedded in their specific case. The ROI from a customer perspective is quite easy to calculate - insufficient testing = don't know how the engine of your business is running.

From a historical perspective software has often included unwanted or hidden features. Just read a few examples about Office 97.