Should we practice "system test driven development?"
Maybe not! ATDD and similar things are already here!
Caught a v neat article on InfoQ by Stefan Friese on architecturally aligned testing... it's useful read.
I reproduce my comment, below, before I forget a few simple ideas...
Stefan, a great article!
Also check out Caitie MaCaffrey's talks / paper on distributed systems verification . . .
Rechtin on Ultraquality - The Challenge
Excellence Beyond Measure and the need for Ultraquality Systems
Continuing the complex systems architecture theme and discussion of ultra-quality systems, the excerpt below is taken from Eberhardt Rechtin, Systems Architecting, Creating and Building Complex Systems, 1991, Chap 8.
Several issues spring to mind today, particularly how the need for some ultra-quality systems continues to be driven . . .
Rechtin on Ultraquality - Redundancy and Fault Tolerance
The Writings of a Complex Systems Architecture Legend
In his classic (but criminally overlooked) 1991 book "Systems Architecting, Creating and Building Complex Systems," Eberhardt Rechtin discusses technical, managerial and architectural responses to the challenge of building high quality systems. Despite being several decades old, 'modern' techniques like Lean manufacturing . . .
Architecting Continuously Testable Systems
Testability Quality Factor for Continuous Delivery in Digital Systems
TL;DR; When we architect systems using automated testing and test-first approaches, we quickly see testability constraints move to our system boundary. Low testability quality factor in external services is a key constraint on our ability to continuously prove our system is in a state of production readiness. We require external systems . . .
Legacy Architecture and Testability
Manual Test Teams and Testability Architectural Debt
The architecture of specification subsystems has always been critical to quality factors like cycle time -
Industry estimates indicate that between 30 and 50 percent (or in some cases, even more) of the cost of developing well-engineered systems is taken up by testing. If the software architect can reduce this cost, the payoff . . .
Quality Factors for SOA
Service-Oriented Architecture and Architectural Quality Factors
In the context of Service-Oriented Architecture, early work from [O'Brien et al, 2005] discusses the importance of quality attributes -
Software architecture is the bridge between mission/business goals and a software-intensive system. Quality attribute requirements drive software architecture design. Choosing and designing . . .
Architectural Quality Factors
Software Architecture in Practice
Recap on extrinsic quality factors
Extrinsic quality factors are key concepts for business and architecture stakeholders. [Bass et al, 2013] use quality factors to describe the architectural characteristics of a system -
availability, modifiability, performance, security, testability, and usability
as . . .