Page - 91 - in The Future of Software Quality Assurance

Testing in the DigitalAge 91 ReducingHuman Risk Repetitive tasks can be a risk for the health of operators. Dangerous environments are also not a great place to execute tests. Together with robots we can eliminate these elements from test execution, making the test environment for us people a healthierandsaferplace. 3.3 Test Execution in aVirtualEngineeringEnvironment Avirtualengineeringenvironmentprovidesauser-centered,first-personperspective that enables users to interact with an engineered system naturally. Interaction within the virtual environment should provide an easily understood interface, correspondingwiththeuser’s technicalbackgroundandexpertise.Inanidealworld, it must enable theuser to exploreanddiscoverunexpectedbutcritical details about the system’s behavior. Exploring and discovering are terms associated with test design techniques like exploratory testing or errorguessing.Findingcritical details starts with executing a checklist and extends to setting up full test projects in a virtual environment.The checklist to work with for testing in a virtual engineering environment ismadeupof the elements that makeorbuildup theenvironment: • Productionandautomationengineering • User-centeredproductdesign • Mechanicsofmaterials • Physicsandmathematics In the end, testing is about gathering information about achieved benefits and remaining quality risks, information which is used to determine the level of confidence that stakeholders have for using a system. This final judgment about confidencestill has tobemadebya human,because theaccountability forbusiness processescan’tbedelegatedtoamachine,nomatterhowintelligent theymayseem tobe. 3.4 BewareofTestingAIwithAI A special case is using artificial intelligence to test other artificial intelligence. In somecases, thismaybeaveryappealingpossibility.Andhowevervalid thisoption maybe,beforedecidingtodoso, thepeople involvedmustverycarefullyweighthe fact that theywillbetestingasystemofwhichtheydon’texactlyknowwhat itdoes, by using another system of which they don’t exactly know what it does. Because, all in all, this is piling up uncertainties. On the other hand, you may argue that in our modernsystems of systems we have long ago become used to trusting systems wedon’t fullyunderstand.