Is testing really a safety net?

I was having a discussion with Steve Wilhelm, one of the most experienced QA from ThoughtWorks, about testing as a safety net. Steve bought up a very nice point which set me thinking. He expressed that, testing should be embedded into the development process and should not considered as a safety net. The point is to bring testing and development closer together. The closer they are the better is the feedback cycle.

The analogy of safety net has two aspects to it:
1. The net is already built and is safe to fall back on. I yet have to see a project which had all the testing ready before the development started. They usually go hand in hand. In fact most of the projects are struggling to get to this point from the old waterfall fashion
2. The net is an independent reusable entity which can be applied any where. Alas, the whole testing strategy has to be crafted for each project and is very tightly coupled with development. “Throw it over the wall” philosophy does not seem to work.

Next time you think of testing, reconsider this analogy.

Greatly influenced by the CIT conference, with the help of folks from the Agile Philly user group, I‘m planning to organize a similar conference on Simple Design and Testing in the greater Philadelphia area. I‘m planning to call it SDTConf 2006.

There is an update on the conference, please check Updated Blog Entry or Conference Website for details.

The Agile Alliance is supporting and sponsoring this conference.

So far what I have planned:
1. Format – Open spaces. Very similar to what we had at CITCon. I would also like to see if we can have some hands of sessions.
2. Dates: Oct 27th – 29th 2006.
3. Venue: West Chester University
4. Theme: Simple Design and Testing. There has been a lot of discussion about simple design, but I have not really seen that happen on large projects. I was wondering if we can learn from each other‘s experience of how to tame this beast. I also want to know whether people recognize the importance of testing and how it helps in simple design.
5. Conference fee = $0 . I want it to be a free conference
6. Delegates: Max 70 people.

As far as I can think, following are the things I would need to make this conference happen:
1. Good Participants: Very important.
2. Venue: University. [At least 2 halls + one lab]
3. Food and drinks
4. Conference website – http://sdtconf.com
5. T-Shirts and other goodies

Based on my rough calculation its looks like the budget for this conference would be around $4k.
1. Food [$3k]
2. T-Shirts and other goodies [$1000]

Since this is based on Open spaces, we need not worry about flying speakers down or any of those.

Based on the above calculations, we would need at least 2 sponsors for this conference, each contributing $2k. Agile Alliance has offered to sponsor $500.

Please drop me a note if you are interested.