Skip to main content

Days 21-23 2022: Truth In Software Testing


The Truth And Nothing But The Truth


Friday I had my brain melted by a 5 and bit hour Zoom meeting. We were attempting to do a full end to end walkthrough of the process/Application we are testing. To use a theatre term is was a "Dress Rehearsal" for next week when we get the business users to do the same thing. It took that long because the application is still riddled with bugs. As well the bugs there as many environmental issues. At almost every point of the process, there are problems. There was aghast team leads on the call who had never seen the application in full flow. The reality of what we have to do to get it to work left them shocked.

Our team lead joked with us that they were not allowed to use certain phrases. Phrases like "Environmental Issues" or "Application Issues." are best avoided when they are talking to the business stakeholders. It got me thinking about how progress gets reported in Software Development. A lot of the time managers it is often trying to sing a tune the Stakeholders wants to hear. All the Stakeholders want to hear is the crafted pop song. The reality? A producer has spent a night feeding the singer's tuneless voice through an Auto-tuner. Everything is great till that singer has to go on stage and sing it live*. (* there are some rumours to get around this certain artists use backing tapes even live)

I have never been in senior management, so I have never had to do the song and dance routine for the stakeholders. I understand that sometimes there may be a need to "parse" reality now and again. I have been on a couple of projects where this parsing has gotten to be the norm and it starts to warp reality.

Truth and Transparency should be at the base of any Software Development. Bending the truth only hurts the project later, and is not good for the people working on that project. Bring the stakeholders in early as possible and show them the reality. You will get a better project that way.


What are your thoughts and experiences?
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day 25 of 2022 : Behind the Walled Garden of Delights

In Your Garden of Delights.. The other day I noticed a story about Disney clawing back a lot of their content is on Netflix. It would appear the days of shared content across platforms is diminishing. The streaming providers want to keep you in their walled garden for as much as possible. If you are a serious tv watcher you are now going to have to subscribe to at least three if not four providers. All that to watch your fave film or TV show. My arithmetic is not that great but it would be safe to say that would be not shy of well over £350 a year. Ouch. We have Prime and Netflix and we do watch them a lot. I had Prime when it was Love Film and £4.99 was a good price. When Amazon came along and waved their wonga at Love Film I continued to only pay £4.99 for years and years. It was down the contract that Amazon had to fulfil. I have since upgraded to a Prime user so now fork out £7.99. My wife decided to pay for Netflix, as she wanted to watch a certain show for a bit. I have to be hon...
Post a Comment
Read more

Day 24 of 2022 : Good Times and Bad Times

  As The Song Doesn't Go.. Bad Time My week started well when I had realised that I had left my wallet in the Takeaway last night. There is quite a lot of people traffic through that particular Takeaway. Some of them look like they would not bat an eyelid at trying a lost card. This morning I went through the process of cancelling everything. I kept checking the online bank to see if any overnight spending spree had happened. I went round early this evening and the good man in Takeaway had retrieved it. I had placed my black wallet on the black table in there. The takeaway had arrived a bit sooner than I had expected. The table camouflaged the wallet so I did not see it when I got up to get my takeaway. Being distracted by my silly phone had not helped either. Good Time I had a bit more of a productive day at work today. Being left alone for most of the day helped. I actually said that in our end of day meeting. Not sure how that landed with people but no one passed any comments on...
Post a Comment
Read more

Day 34 of 2022 : Throwback Thursday Album

 Very 'eavy..Very 'umble Poor old Uriah Heep. They were always in the shade of the likes of Deep Purple, Led Zep and the like. Shame, as over the years they have produced some top classic rock tunes. Tunes that I hink match anything that Purple and co ever produced. Heep had their moments in the early '70s for sure but never seemed to sustain it. The ever-changing lineup - the errant and affable Mick Box is the only constant presence. I have my favourite albums from different eras of the band, but I have chosen their debut "Very 'eavy..Very 'umble' . Chose it on the basis it was one of the first second-hand albums that I bought in the record shop. Gatefold sleeve no less. I still have it sitting in the record box. Uriah Heep 1970 It also displays all the moving parts of Heep, the pop, the rock, the proggy jazz. The opening Gypsy has the late Ken Hensley working the Hammon Organ hard. Hensley had only joined the band so had very little in the way of writing...
Post a Comment
Read more