How Google Tests Software

2012 Jolt Award finalist! Pioneering the Future of Software Test Do you need to get it right, too? Then, learn from Google. Legendary testing expert James Whittaker, until recently a Google testing leader, and two top Google experts reveal exactly how Google tests software, offering brand-new best practices you can use even if you're not quite Google's size...yet! Breakthrough Techniques You Can Actually Use Discover 100% practical, amazingly scalable techniques for analyzing risk and planning tests...thinking like real users...implementing exploratory, black box, white box, and acceptance testing...getting usable feedback...tracking issues...choosing and creating tools...testing "Docs & Mocks," interfaces, classes, modules, libraries, binaries, services, and infrastructure...reviewing code and refactoring...using test hooks, presubmit scripts, queues, continuous builds, and more. With these techniques, you can transform testing from a bottleneck into an accelerator-and make your whole organization more productive!Foreword by Alberto Savoia xiii Foreword by Patrick Copeland xvii Preface xxiii Chapter 1: Introduction to Google Software Testing 1 Quality?Test 5 Roles 6 Organizational Structure 8 Crawl, Walk, Run 10 Types of Tests 12 Chapter 2: The Software Engineer in Test 15 The Life of an SET 17 Development and Test Workflow 17 Who Are These SETs Anyway? 22 The Early Phase of a Project 22 Team Structure 24 Design Docs 25 Interfaces and Protocols 27 Automation Planning 28 Testability 29 SET Workflow: An Example 32 Test Execution 40 Test Size Definitions 41 Use of Test Sizes in Shared Infrastructure 44 Benefits of Test Sizes 46 Test Runtime Requirements 48 Case 1: Change in Common Library 52 Test Certified 54 An Interview with the Founders of the Test Certified Program 57 Interviewing SETs 62 An Interview with Tool Developer Ted Mao 68 An Interview with Web Driver Creator Simon Stewart 70 Chapter 3: The Test Engineer 75 A User-Facing Test Role 75 The Life of a TE 76 Test Planning 79 Risk 97 Life of a Test Case 108 Life of a Bug 113 Recruiting TEs 127 Test Leadership at Google 134 Maintenance Mode Testing 137 Quality Bots Experiment 141 BITE Experiment 153 Google Test Analytics 163 Free Testing Workflow 169 External Vendors 173 An Interview with Google Docs TE Lindsay Webster 175 An Interview with YouTube TE Apple Chow 181 Chapter 4: The Test Engineering Manager 187 The Life of a TEM 187 Getting Projects and People 189 Impact 191 An Interview with Gmail TEM Ankit Mehta 193 An Interview with Android TEM Hung Dang 198 An Interview with Chrome TEM Joel Hynoski 202 The Test Engineering Director 206 An Interview with Search and Geo Test Director Shelton Mar 207 An Interview with Engineering Tools Director Ashish Kumar 211 An Interview with Google India Test Director Sujay Sahni 214 An Interview with Engineering Manager Brad Green 219 An Interview with James Whittaker 222 Chapter 5: Improving How Google Tests Software 229 Fatal Flaws in Google's Process 229 The Future of the SET 231 The Future of the TE 233 The Future of the Test Director and Manager 234 The Future of Test Infrastructure 234 In Conclusion 235 Appendix A: Chrome OS Test Plan 237 Overview of Themes 237 Risk Analysis 238 Per-Build Baseline Testing 239 Per-LKG Day Testing 239 Per-Release Testing 239 Manual Versus Automation 240 Dev Versus Test Quality Focus 240 Release Channels 240 User Input 241 Test Case Repositories 241 Test Dashboarding 241 Virtualization 241 Performance 242 Stress, Long-Running, and Stability 242 Test Execution Framework (Autotest) 242 OEMs 242 Hardware Lab 242 E2E Farm Automation 243 Testing the Browser AppManager 243 Browser Testability 243 Hardware 244 Timeline 244 Primary Test Drivers 246 Relevant Documents 246 Appendix B: Test Tours for Chrome 247 The Shopping Tour 247 The Student Tour 248 Suggested Areas to Test 248 The International Calling Tour 249 Suggested Areas to Test 249 The Landmark Tour 249 Suggested Landmarks in Chrome 249 The All Nighter Tour 250 Suggested Areas to Test 250 The Artisan's Tour 251 Tools in Chrome 251 The Bad Neighborhood Tour 251 Bad Neighborhoods in Chrome OS 251 The Personalization Tour 252 Ways to Customize Chrome 252 Appendix C: Blog Posts on Tools and Code 253 Take a BITE out of Bugs and Redundant Labor 253 Unleash the QualityBots 255 RPF: Google's Record Playback Framework 257 Google Test Analytics-Now in Open Source 260 Comprehensive 260 Quick 260 Actionable 260 Sustained Value 260 Index 265