---
title: "In which phase is your software?"
url: https://daily.dev/posts/in-which-phase-is-your-software--gnjcxpbrl
source_url: https://playfulprogramming.com/posts/in-which-phase-is-your-software-5253
type: article
source: "Playful Programming"
published: 2026-03-16T21:47:57.395Z
updated: 2026-03-16T22:00:56.074Z
tags: ["testing"]
reading_time: 2
upvotes: 0
comments: 0
language: en
---

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# In which phase is your software?

**[Playful Programming](https://daily.dev/sources/playfulprogramming)** · 2 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments

## Summary

An exploration of Kent Beck's 3X model (Explore, Expand, Extract) applied to software testing strategy. Each phase of a software product's lifecycle calls for a different testing investment: in Explore, the market itself is the test; in Expand, a mix of manual and automated testing supports scaling; in Extract, automation dominates to reduce costs. A triathlon metaphor illustrates why applying the wrong approach at the wrong phase causes problems.

## Full article

daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: <https://playfulprogramming.com/posts/in-which-phase-is-your-software-5253>

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Tags: [#testing](https://daily.dev/tags/testing)

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