A few blog posts back, I tried to emphasize the relative importance of skilled people over documentation by remarking that commercial airlines “tend to have a captain and a first officer in the cockpit, rather than a pilot and a book on how to fly an aircraft”. “Tend to” was intended to understate the case; as Rob remarks below, you’ll see single pilots only on very small planes (like the … Read more
This post is here only as a matter of historical record. Eventually, the bad guys go away. Related to my post about the World Agile Testing Qualifications Board, on March 31, I posted the following discussion on the WAQB LinkedIn list: Linkedin Groups March 31, 2009 World Agile Qualifications Board – WAQB Today’s Activity: 1 discussion Discussions (1) Does anyone /know/ anything about the World Agile Qualifications Board? 1 comment … Read more
Back in the 1980s and 1990s, Quarterdeck Office Systems (later Quarterdeck Corporation)—a company for whom I worked—was in the business of creating multitasking and memory management products to extend and enhance to Microsoft’s DOS operating system. The ideas that our programmers developed were so good and so useful that similar ideas were typically adopted by Microsoft and folded into DOS a year or so later. After each new version of … Read more
Scott Berkun has an interesting post on requirements, and why they’re problemmatic. He says that “data collection” isn’t the issue. I agree with that. He also refers to “requirements gathering” (to me, not so good) and “requirements definition” (a little better, perhaps). I like to think of this whole business not as requirements gathering, but as requirements development. (I credit Ian Heppell for pointing this out to me, but I … Read more
In a blog post on The Test Eye, Martin Jansson has some things to say about the dangers of The Indispensable Worker. The post is worth reading. I commented there, and do a somewhat better job of it here: Your point about indispensability is well-taken. In workshops that I’ve attended, Jerry Weinberg has often pointed out the urgency of getting rid of the problem of indispensability. If someone appears to … Read more
James Bach reports on a statement allegedly made by Yaron Sinai, the CEO of Elementool, and Joseph Ours comments. In light of Joseph’s comment, I too wonder if Elementool was tested by human testers under the control of their own process. Perhaps it was tested by testers who strictly followed the steps, which Mr. Sinai apparently suggested was all that was necessary. If the latter, then Joseph’s experience can be … Read more
Perusing my Blogger page, I suddenly realize that I never posted this final wrap-up to my original observations on IMVU and its 50-deployments-a-day approach, plus the comments here, here, here, and here. In addition to his Quality is Dead article, James has added his perspective on IMVU specifically. Is there a problem at IMVU? As an outsider, is this any of my business anyway? I think so, at least to … Read more
Markus Gärtner commented, in part, Actually what seems to be missing is the pride and responsibility in the software world. From my point of view I can pile up a lot of technical debt, but deliver really fast. I’m not so sure if pride is missing. Timothy Fitz seemed to be proud of the work that he was doing. Moreover, hubris is a form of pride, and there seems to … Read more
In response to my post on IMVU, I was delighted to receive a reply from Timothy Fitz, whose original blog entry triggered my investigation. There are many things to like about Timothy’s reply. First of all, it’s honest and forthright. Second, he seems not to be taking personally the criticism of the product that he and his company have been working on for years. It’s a rare skill not to … Read more
In the comments to our rapid test of IMVU, Elisabeth Hendrickson said, “Great list of issues. However, I suspect that these issues don’t really interfere with the core value to the target users.” That might be true. I think it might be more accurate to suggest that the issues don’t interfere with the core value to the existing users. That is, IMVU might be hitting the dartboard, but not the … Read more