Is 'better than what you had before' really better ?

So, you work hard and do the best you can manage, but you just don't quite meet the users expectations.  Bummer

They're a reasonable group of people and after assessing the situation, they give you a mulligan and almost apologetically offer:

"It's better than what we had before."

Does it feel as satisfying to put 72 on your scorecard and sign, when you know you really shot 73?  Are you going to brag about that 72 as you celebrate at the 19th hole or are you going to go to the driving range and hit a couple of buckets of balls, so you can earn it next time?

6:56 PM - Friday, February 24, 2006 - comments {0}

Testing is NOT QA !! :)

I need to be a realist and face the fact that so many people in the industry want to believe that by performing testing activities, they are doing some level of Quality Assurance.  This is most certainly why the testing group is so often connected to or labeled as QA.  Management can then claim to be doing some type of QA, while inefficient requirements and design processes remain largely ignored and continue to result in software with built-in flaws where the code executes perfectly, but fails to satisfy the users needs.

It always makes me feel better when I get that off of my chest.

Ah yes, I know that this misconception will always exist, but when I hear it, I don't think it will ever fail to get me, at the very least, to grit my teeth.

Stated plainly:

Quality Assurance implements techniques designed to measure the quality of a process.

Quality Control implements inspection techniques designed to measure the quality of a product.

Testing is a type of inspection, which is a Quality Control technique.

Apolgies to Beizer, Boehm, Humphrey, Kaner or Pressman.  I can't remember which one of them I am quoting.

9:18 PM - Thursday, February 23, 2006 - comments {1}

So, what is a tirade ?

9:47 PM - Wednesday, February 22, 2006 - comments {0}