典型的测试错误有哪些？(7)

　　5. When beta users report a bug, the bug report is often unusable. It costs much more time and effort to handle a user bug report than one generated internally.

　　当β用户报告错误时，错误报告常常无法使用。处理一个用户的错误报告比一个内部产生的错误报告要花费多得多的时间和精力。

　　Beta programs can be useful, but they require careful planning and monitoring if they are to do more than give a warm fuzzy feeling that at least some customers have used the product before it's inflicted on all of them. See [Kaner93] for a brief description.

　　β程序可能是有用的，但是需要仔细的计划和监督，否则它们在激怒所有β客户之前，除了带来一种模糊的、兴奋的感觉，认为至少有一些客户在使用产品之外，不会后其他收获。参见[kaner93]以获取一个简要描述。

　　The one situation in which beta programs are unequivocally useful is in configuration testing. For any possible screwy configuration, you can find a beta user who has it. You can do much more configuration testing than would be possible in an in-house lab (or even perhaps an outsourced testing agency). Beta users won't do as thorough a job as a trained tester, but they'll catch gross errors of the "BackupBuster doesn't work on this brand of 'compatible' floppy tape drive" sort.

　　β测试有用的一种情况是配置测试。对于任何古怪的配置，你都可以找到一个使用此配置的β用户。你可以做比机构内部实验室(或者甚至是外包给测试机构)多的配置测试。β用户不会象一个训练有素的测试员一样做完整的测试，但他们可以捕捉到大致错误，像“BackupBuster在这个品牌的兼容磁带驱动器上不能工作”。

　　Beta programs are also useful for building word of mouth advertising, getting "first glance" reviews in magazines, supporting third-party vendors who will build their product on top of yours, and so on. Those are properly marketing activities, not testing.

　　β程序也有助于建立口头的广告，获得杂志的“第一印象”评论，支持第三方供应商在你的产品上构建他们的产品等等。这些都是正常的市场营销活动，不是测试。

　　Planning and replanning in support of the role of testing

　　计划和重新计划测试的支持作用

　　Each of the types of testing described above, including functional testing, reduces uncertainty about a particular aspect of the product. When done, you have confidence that some functional areas are less buggy, others more. The product either usually works on new configurations, or it doesn't.

　　上面所描述的包括功能测试在内的各种类型的测试，减少了产品某一方面的不确定性。在执行完毕后，你可以确信某些功能领域的错误较少了，其他的还比较多。产品通常将在新配置中起作用，或者是不起作用。

　　There's a natural tendency toward finishing one testing task before moving on to the next, but that may lead you to discover bad news too late. It's better to know something about all areas than everything about a few. When you've discovered where the problem areas lie, you can test them to greater depth as a way of helping the developers raise the quality by finding the important bugs.

　　有一种很自然的倾向，就是在进行到下一个测试任务之前先完成一个任务，但这可能导致你过晚地发现坏消息。对所有领域都了解一些比深入了解几个领域更重要。如果你发现了问题在哪个地方，你可以更深入地测试它们，通过发现重要 bug来帮助开发人员提高质量。

　　Strictly, I've been over-simplistic in describing testing's role as reducing uncertainty. It would be better to say "risk-weighted uncertainty". Some areas in the product are riskier than others, perhaps because they're used by more customers or because failures in that area would be particularly severe. Riskier areas require more certainty. Failing to correctly identify risky areas is a common mistake, and it leads to misallocated testing effort. There are two sound approaches for identifying risky areas:

　　严格地说，我对将测试的作用描述为减少不确定性是太简单了。更恰当的说法是“风险加权”的不确定性。产品中某些领域比其他领域更有风险，也许是因为它们由更多客户使用或是因为那个领域的故障更严重。危险性高的区域需要更好的稳定性。不能正确地识别危险区域是一个常犯的错误，它导致测试工作的不恰当分配。

　　1. Ask everyone you can for their opinion. Gather data from developers, marketers, technical writers, customer support people, and whatever customer representatives you can find. See [Kaner96a] for a good description of this kind of collaborative test planning.

原文转自：http://www.uml.org.cn/Test/200709289.asp