Antipattern: Lack of effective acceptance testing

Here is one of the XP2006 workshop antipatterns the group worked on.

Poor solution:
Acceptance testing is either not done or done at the end

Forces:
Excessive belief in unit testing
No testers involved
Insufficient awareness of how to “agilize” old habits
No acceptance test criteria
Excessive time/resources to run
Lack of hardware/understanding of economic issues
Perfectionism – 100% must be testable
Reliance on manual work

Consequences:
Systems that don’t work
Release bugstorms
Projects canceled
Loss of trust

Example:
1,000 unit tests, but the system is broken

Better solution:
Insist on acceptance test criteria
Buy hardware
Training on iterative testing
automation
Exceptions:
Trivial systems
Internal tools
Prototypes

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