TLDR version:
why is the concept of “integration” within a factory or company so complicated for some people? Yes, what one department does affects the rest!
I don’t have anything better to do version:
Two of my coworkers, when I ask them to gimme data so I can test the parts of the system where theirs and mine interact, or to check that what I’ve been doing which affects their parts is ok with them, don’t because “we’ll do that in integration testing!”
In theory, integration testing is done by the functional analysts (that’s us) without the key users present, but I’m reasonably sure that a lot of those theories weren’t considering the reality of SAP implementations involving more than two modules and one location. Or that of humanity, actually: you mean there are key users who say “I can’t pick up either option until I’ve seen how they work”? Oh my gosh! The reality is that in lots of projects, there is informal integration testing, run without the users there, and then the formal part, whose purpose is in part to catch process defects (those who come from bad ideas and not bad programming) when there is still a good amount of time to fix them. IME, the projects that do it like this are the better ones. You don’t need to turn the formal testing into a show, but when you’re getting to a part you think that some users need to see or that they have asked to see, you call them.
The same coworkers who don’t want to do informal integration testing are insisting that we do the formal testing without the users. One of them also has the balkiest deciders. Duuude, show them what they need to see already, don’t wait until one month before go-live! No, he wants to do it without the users. He can’t get to the end of a sentence without inserting an “if you know what I mean” and three “well, perhaps… but no, no”, and he can’t understand why his users would like to see key parts of the process before deciding whether they want Option A (more complicated, more flexible) or Option B (simpler, more rigid). If I was his user I’d want to see if the screen really is blue before believing the screenies, just from the way he talks.
Same guy keeps complaining that the production test is “too big, why are you doing the same thing five times?” “It’s actually seven times, and because making this product has seven stages - if we don’t do all seven, you don’t get the correct product costing analysis” “but why do you have seven stages?” “because intermediates get isolated at each stage, inspected at four of them, each stage can generate other outputs, and some of those intermediates can go into several products” “oh” (give him two days he’ll ask again; Boss jokes I should record my part). He was expecting his “month’s-end closing integration test” to include only finance. It’s integration testing, you have to include the activities other people do at month’s end. “But none of them do anything, this is all finance!” “They run inventory, allocate deviations to work orders (not to inventory deviation accounts) because that’s how finance wants it, close orders, open the next month’s orders…” “Butbutbut” Butt is what you sit on. Get! Moving!
