The Book on Testing
For a World that Runs on Software
by Alex Rodov

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More than ever, we depend on software to get through our everyday lives. It’s embedded in our smartphones, cars, children’s toys, and household appliances (even our toasters), and it’s transforming our world. This brave new world of technology offers exciting opportunities, but it has never been more important that we recognize and understand the risks to our security and safety. When software goes bad, the consequences can range from the farcical (such as the HealthCare.gov fiasco, in which a highly-touted government website crashed almost immediately upon being launched) to the tragic (as in the case of the Arizona woman who was killed by a self-driving car that didn’t recognize her as a pedestrian). Testing is our line of defence against these software-related catastrophes. Yet, for years, it was seen as an afterthought—a chore that developers only carried out because they had to, and which they tried to complete as cheaply and quickly as possible. In The Book on Testing, Alex Rodov leads the reader on a personal and informal tour of the software-testing landscape, focusing on what happens when it isn’t done properly. In easy-to-understand language, he offers real-life examples, as well as insights gained from decades of experience, to demonstrate why it doesn’t have to be that way. Testing is difficult and can never be perfect. But if it’s done well, we’ll all be able to sleep better at night.

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Alex Rodov is the Founder and CEO at QA Consultants, which he founded in 1994. He was one of the first to treat quality assurance as a field of its own, and his enduring contribution to the field has been to establish software testing as a specific skill set. Alex established QA Consultants as a dedicated local testing centre of excellence featuring on-demand local access to professional testers with a wide range of field expertise. Under his leadership, QA Consultants has grown from a groundbreaking idea into a cutting-edge quality assurance company recognized as a market leader in the multi-billion-dollar North America software testing industry. Alex has been widely recognized for his visionary leadership and his pioneering innovations Throughout his career, Alex has led some of the largest and most complex North American quality assurance projects and initiatives and developed new processes and methodologies that became the global standard.

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Contributors

Author

Alex Rodov

Editor

Peter Watkins

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