實際上，不管表面上的作用是什么，大多數組織都相信測試的目的是發現 bug。這個定義的危害比前一個定義的危害要小，但是忽略了一個關鍵詞。當我同程序員和開發經理談到測試員的時候，不時聽到一個關鍵的句子：測試員找不到重要的 bug。有時候這種說法只是一種抱怨，有時候是因為程序員對于什么是正確的感覺不對，但我很遺憾地說，它們經常是有效的批評。測試員的太多的bug 報告是微小的、不相關的，而有太多重要的錯誤都被遺漏了。
What\'s an important bug? Important to whom? To a first approximation, the answer must be \"to customers\". Almost everyone will nod their head upon hearing this definition, but do they mean it? Here\'s a test of your organization\'s maturity. Suppose your product is a system that accepts email requests for service. As soon as a request is received, it sends a reply that says \"your request of 5/12/97 was accepted and its reference ID is NIC-051297-3\". A tester who sends in many requests per day finds she has difficulty keeping track of which request goes with which ID. She wishes that the original request were appended to the acknowledgement. Furthermore, she realizes that some customers will also generate many requests per day, so would also appreciate this feature. Would she:
