I was recently in a work environment where we had literally thousands and thousands of test cases that were stored in a tool called TestLink. A major problem was that there was very little impetus for the testers to ever really analyze all these tests or to ever question if TestLink was the most effective tool to be used. This was due in part to some members of management who, perhaps in fear of bruising egos or seeming too critical, basically said: “What we’ve done has worked.” When the testers heard that, they basically assumed: “Well, that means our testing has been good.” Eventually I came along and essentially argued that our test repository was a mess and that our tool of choice was not the most effective. Here’s a little of what I learned from that experience.