Blitz Testing

From the Und-donut-und-blitzen Dept.

Ever seen something named so evocatively that it actively destroys the intended meaning?

Blitz testing is a concept I believe invented at Atlassian.

The original idea was-

  • A short round of testing, done at the end of engineering.
  • The goal was advertisement, i.e. communicating that the new feature was avaiable.
  • You wanted a wide range of internal staff doing the testing - especially including sales and support.
  • There was an expectation that no bugs would be found, at least not any major ones.

However, the name is perfectly evocative of a “lightning fast round of testing”. Teams would introduce the full and proper “blitz testing”, but without careful controls it just came to mean-

  • A short round of testing

You could ask 2 teams “do you practise blitz testing?” and the answer “yes” would be meaningless, because the concept didn’t survive the evocativeness of its name. Maybe it needed a more boring or techical or specific name?