Is unit testing development or testing?
- by Rubio
I had a discussion with a testing manager about the role of unit and integration testing. She requested that developers report what they have unit and integration tested and how. My perspective is that unit and integration testing are part of the development process, not the testing process. Beyond semantics what I mean is that unit and integration tests should not be included in the testing reports and systems testers should not be concerned about them. My reasoning is based on two things.
Unit and integration tests are planned and performed against an interface and a contract, always. Regardless of whether you use formalized contracts you still test what e.g. a method is supposed to do, i.e. a contract.
In integration testing you test the interface between two distinct modules. The interface and the contract determine when the test passes. But you always test a limited part of the whole system. Systems testing on the other hand is planned and performed against the system specifications. The spec determines when the test passes.
I don't see any value in communicating the breadth and depth of unit and integration tests to the (systems) tester. Suppose I write a report that lists what kind of unit tests are performed on a particular business layer class. What is he/she supposed to take away from that?
Judging what should and shouldn't be tested from that is a false conclusion because the system may still not function the way the specs require even though all unit and integration tests pass.
This might seem like useless academic discussion but if you work in a strictly formal environment as I do, it's actually important in determining how we do things. Anyway, am I totally wrong? (Sorry for the long post.)
