Would you like to quickly find where some of your most critical system defects?
Take a lesson from healthcare: transitions in care are well-documented high-risk times. This is not a one-off issue but a repeatable pattern.
Software systems exhibit the same pattern during transitions:
- You might say, “System A did its job,” but “System B holds the truth.” It's essential to prove it.
Consider this real-world example:
Your doctor says they sent the prescription. The pharmacy claims they don’t have it. Ultimately, you still don’t have your medication. The gap lies in this hand-off: sent ≠ received ≠ applied.
To address this, lean into testing transitions:
- Define what “done” means on both sides of the transition.
- Trust, but verify: don’t stop at “sent.” Confirm it was received and actually applied.
Test both acceptable and unacceptable outcomes:
- Acceptable: slowdowns, retries, short delays.
- Not acceptable: missing, wrong, late, duplicates.
- If you exceed a limit, log it as beyond tolerance - don’t mask issues behind a green check.
Why is this important? Testing these hand-offs provides evidence where it matters most and can make the rest of your test suite feel surprisingly simpler. Your customers will thank you for it.
