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

Well, that generated some comments. Interesting. People talk a lot about testing, but nothing gets ’em fired up like test results. I really appreciate the feedback, and I’d like to respond to it here, over a couple of posts. I don’t mind Blogger’s Compose feature but (as far as I know so far), it has a pretty clumsy method for editing comments. Like, none that I can see. Sai Venkatakrishnan … Read more

There was much rejoicing on Twitter this afternoon over a blog posting. Apparently, IMVU is rolling out fifty deployments each and every day, and they’re doing so by the magic of Continuous Deployment. “The high level of our process is dead simple: Continuously integrate (commit early and often). On commit automatically run all tests. If the tests pass deploy to the cluster. If the deploy succeeds, repeat.“ Some more details: … Read more

Conversation, whether in person or online, is one of those marvelously unpredictable things. Real conversation a fundamentally exploratory activity. When assisted by a good encyclopedia, dictionary, or reference library—or the Web, it’s even more fun. Good conversation, like good exploration, takes us to interesting places. Tonight, Ben Simo and I were griping to each other, in Skype, about Skype’s horrid new chat window. My complaint was the way in which … Read more