Mike Rogers spent his time grilling Kathleen Sibelius about testing. He wanted to know why there had been no end to end testing. He would not let her explain about the regression testing going on. Mike Rogers, in trying to seem web smart proved to be web stupid.
End to end testing. What sort of end to end testing does he want? Stem to stern? All scenarios? How does he define it? After all, the Obama site does not have a termination date, so what is his outward end? Or, is he demanding eternal testing before the site goes live? And wtf does he think regression testing is?
End to end tests are tests of functional requirements. Performance, safety and security are nonfunctional requirements. Again, how is he defining end to end testing to prove security and safety?
Mike Rogers is involved in overseeing defense contracts. Missiles have the ability to be tested end to end. They go up - front end - they come down - back end. Satellites have the ability to be tested end to end. They also go up and come down. The days in the middle are pretty much alike, so if you test day in the life with anomalies, you can end to end test. How does Mike Rogers define an end to end test? One user interaction? Lots of people in an hour? What is he talking about?
By trying to make Secretary Sibelius look incompetent, he proved himself ignorant.
It is clear that the Republicans are trying to convince Americans not to enroll because their data would not be secure. We need to let America know that Rogers' demands that everything be stopped for end to end tests is both ridiculous and will not accomplish what he is demanding. I would love to see some nonembedded systems software testing experts on a few of our favorite shows to talk about what Rogers was asking for and what reality is for testing a system.
To be sure, the web site was inadequately tested. But before Rogers goes and demands specific types of tests, don't you think he should make sure the tests he asks for are tests that will accomplish his goals? Better still, should a non software geek be telling a non software geek to tell software geeks how to run their tests?