In Gerald Weinberg’s classification, the “pattern 0″ organization is known as the “oblivious” culture (“We don’t even know that we’re performing a process”). One tool that comes to my mind when thinking about that culture is Microsoft Excel.
How many people using Excel think of their formulas as automation requiring testing?
Let’s say you have a formula like =a1*b1+c1 but really what you meant was =a1*(b1+c1). This is obviously simplistic, but it highlights two needs:
Did I understand correctly what needed to be automated?
Do I have a good mastery of the mathematical (and excel) tools?
The latter being, in my opinion, easier to improve than the former. And the difficulty can be compounded by the fact that if I am developing this model for myself then, most likely, nobody else is going to look at it.
Why not “unit testing” for Excel?
This doesn’t seem to be a topic often covered in Excel classes, even though it should be addressed from the beginners course and at each other level from there on.
Codematic Ltd. seems to have thought about that.
http://www.codematic.net/excel-development/excel-dev-general/excel-testing.htm
