Half a loaf is better than no bread

One of my colleagues asked me a couple of days ago, what if the effort we are putting with changing strategies and taking calculated risk does not produce the desired result. This is a classic problem in decision making process which the famous management guru Peter Drucker called "The Right compromise". We have to start with what is right rather than what is acceptable ! Every decision we make has to meet its boundary conditions and we always have to make compromises at the end. But if we can not distinguish between right compromises and wrong compromises we are most likely to make wrong compromises at the end. To put this into context of the question that was asked, I will take Testing as an example. Boundary conditions of a software testing project are defined by uncovering quality bugs in the product and the confidence to release it to the customer. When we do not see the result that was expected, we make decision and as discussed above if decision was made with right compromises in mind that is "half a loaf" but goes into the right direction toward the ideal solution. Let me get to the point now. Here are the few problems that contributed to the outcome that were not expected:

• Starting testing too late is the classic mistakes test team does in many situations. Planning testing ahead of coding is the answer. Tests have to be ready before code is dropped. 
• Finishing one testing task before moving to the next is another mistake we do that causes above at first place. In testing world, its better to know something about all areas than everything about few, specially when objective is to hunt bugs. 
• Failing to identify riskier areas   is a common mistake that leads to mis allocated testing effort. Looking at historical bug report data and collaboratively working with developers help identify the risky area correctly.

More later... agree/disagree please let me know..