When testing goes shockingly wrong!

A borough council in the UK, which is responsible for reviewing residents and commercial planning applications has made legally binding rejections and approvals on planning applications as an employee thought he was using a website in a test environment.

The planning applications are used to request changes to existing buildings in the local area and require careful consideration by the local authorities and residents.

However per the article, an employee thought he was testing the new software being used to review planning applications and gave some hilarious responses to planning requests which were ultimately sent to applicants to their horror.

“Your proposal is whack” and “Don’t even bother re-applying lol”

Testing always seems to fall on the junior members of teams, I suppose it helps get the newbies used to software and processes they will deal with in their new job. However as this story shows, it is prudent to ensure there are multiple checks in place before anything is sent out of your organisation automatically.

It would be interesting to see if this council bothered to write a test strategy or test plan before allowing their users to get started. Remember, always write a test strategy and test plan and if you don’t know what you are doing, speak to a professional who does!