Testing is pretty important in the world of development; web or otherwise. This is especially true when it comes to applications that will change the day-to-day responsibilities of your staff, and even more true when the application is going to be exposed to clients giving them control over their web presence.

First, never rely on the developer who wrote the application to bless it before taking it into production. No matter how strong the force is with him, he is using the application how it was intended to be used. He isn’t thinking about some of the strange stuff users come up with. He can write all the unit tests he wants, but those are even inherently flawed; the unit tests are looking for results based on data and actions usually supplied by the developer.

Secondly, testing needs to start long before a week to launch day. Someone should be writing use cases, and someone should be creating tickets as development moves along. This person should test and retest. The type of person I have known to be great in this position usually isn’t even a developer. They’re just web savy people or your Project Managers. These people should know their way around the net, but they don’t always need to know how to fix the problem…they just need to see a problem exists.

If they realize they can paste an entire novel into a product description field, that might be a problem. If they can create a promo to give away $300 giftcards on orders of $300 or less, there may be a problem. If they pray to the gods for rain and your application replies by wiping the database, you may have a problem.

I know the degree of testing can change depending on the depth of the project, but next time your boss wants to go live and fix shit as it breaks on a major application change or release, fight it. Mention how it will save money to test now rather than going live and having to pay staff to work on urgent fixes instead of the new features they want.

And for those sensitive developers out there, testing isn’t an insult to you. Stop feeling attacked when someone calls something out…they’re helping strengthen your app. You big baby.