As an experiment, I have been exploring whether system testing can be reframed as a specialised form of quality assessment.
The motivation is not to replace testing, but to see whether a generic assessment model can also explain traditional testing. An assessment typically requires two things: an assessment model that describes how evidence is gathered and evaluated, and a reference model that defines the criteria against which the object is assessed.
Interestingly, the testing process maps surprisingly well to the assessment model. Test design becomes evidence planning, test execution becomes evidence collection, and test reporting becomes assessment reporting.
But the more interesting insight emerged on the reference-model side.
If testing is an assessment, what constitutes its reference model?
The first obvious candidate is requirements. This reframes requirement analysis from understanding what to test into something more fundamental: constructing and validating the reference model against which the product will be assessed.
Viewed this way, many familiar requirement problems start to look different. Are the requirements complete enough to assess the product? Are important quality attributes missing? Do stakeholders agree on the criteria for success? Are release decisions based on expectations that were never captured in the reference model?
Perhaps some of the bottlenecks we experience in requirements work are not really testing problems at all. They are reference-model problems.
That was not the insight I was looking for when I started this experiment, but it may turn out to be the more interesting one.
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