Laws of Software Development: Murphy’s Law in Software Testing

Anything that can go wrong will go wrong

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This article is one of the “Laws in Software Development” series:

• 80/20 Rule
• Broken Window Theory
• Parkinson’s Law: “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion”
• Sturgeon’s law: “ninety percent of everything is crap”
• Murphy’s law: “Anything that can go wrong will go wrong”
• The 10,000-Hour Rule: “The key to achieving true expertise is simply a matter of practicing”
• Brooks’ Law: “Adding manpower to a late project makes it later.”
• Hosftadter’s Law: “It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter’s Law.”
• Conway’s Law: “Any piece of software reflects the organizational structure that produced it.”
• …

Table of Contents
· Murphy’s law
∘ 1. IT executives often neglect the importance of quality.
∘ 2. Lacking E2E Test Automation
∘ 3. Lacking a real Continuous Testing process.
∘ 4. Need to understand the limits of Manual Testing
· My own experience with Murphy’s Law