Laws of Software Development: Sturgeon’s Law in E2E Test Automation and Continuous Testing

“ninety percent of everything is crap”

A repost of my past article published on Medium in 2024

This article is one of the “Laws in Software Development” series:

• 80/20 Rule

• Broken Window Theory

• Parkinson’s Law: “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion”

• Sturgeon’s law: “ninety percent of everything is crap”

• Murphy’s law: “Anything that can go wrong will go wrong”

• The 10,000-Hour Rule: “The key to achieving true expertise is simply a matter of practicing”

• Brooks’ Law: “Adding manpower to a late project makes it later.”

• Hosftadter’s Law: “It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter’s Law.”

• Conway’s Law: “Any piece of software reflects the organizational structure that produced it.”

• …

Update (2024–10–10): Part 2: How to Beat it?

Sturgeon’s Law

Sturgeon’s law (or Sturgeon’s revelation) is an adage stating “ninety percent of everything is crap”. It was coined by Theodore Sturgeon, an American science fiction author and critic, and was inspired by his observation. [source: Wikipedia]

Some might disagree, might say, “99+% of bridges are OK, 99+% of cars are very reliable, 99+% aeroplanes are made are good”. True. It’s important to note that these industries are heavily regulated. The government imposes significant fines for misconduct, and individuals responsible for failures can face imprisonment.

For instance, if a similar “Blue Screen Death Day” event happened in other industries, it would have resulted in CrowdStrike’s immediate bankruptcy and legal consequences for its executives. (Human errors are not entirely preventable, but they should be managed through a robust Quality Engineering process. In the absence of such a process — something that’s quite common in the software industry — legal consequences may follow.)

In contrast, the software industry often faces only minor penalties for mistakes, leading to a neglect of quality assurance, particularly in automation.

Laws of Software Development: Murphy’s Law in Software Testing

In these fields, “engineering” carries substantial weight, unlike in “software engineering”, where such stringent oversight and consequences are less common.

In the article, I will focus on Sturgeon’s Law in End-to-End Test Automation and CI/CD.

If we stretch the Sturgeon’s law a bit: “90% crap, 9% average, 1% good”.