Rainbow Testing

Zombie projects – when the software lifecycle won’t die

Your original planned installation date was 6 months ago. Management has repeatedly lumped and un-lumped your project in with other various releases, or split the original project into various phases, sometimes in ways that defy logic.

From each phase, defects that didn’t create too much impact but would be challenging to fix were deferred to the next phase, and then the next.

Now most of the functionality is in production, primary resources have been moved off the team, current deadlines are vague, and there’s a batch of outstanding issues that have been pushed off for so long that you’re no longer entirely certain how to deal with them.

It’s the long, slow death of a project that has been in trouble for a while.

Step one, account for the living

First of all you should count your successes. If indeed most of the functionality has been released and is being used, count yourself lucky. Many, many projects never make it that far. If you take a moment and clearly enumerate just what has been accomplished; celebrate the living; it will give you the fortitude to face the undead.

Round up the zombies

They are strong, they are brutal, they are insensitive to pain, but zombies aren’t very agile. Use that most basic of QA tools, the list, to round them up so you know what you are dealing with. What do you know for sure about this project? What functionality is still being worked on? What releases have been agreed to? There are some tasks and defects that will fall under those two categories and those are the living, for now.

Use light and fire

What is unclear? Clarification is the light that zombies fear. List the items that have not been released, aren’t being worked on but have not been killed off. These are the things that are neither living nor dead. Your quest is to track down the stakeholder who can own them or remove them from the project. For every clear decision made: publish. Clear decisions are the fire of zombie destruction. Put them in broadcast emails, or weekly reports, or bring them up in status meetings and make sure they make it into the meeting notes. These zombies are dead.

Defects: little zombie dust bunnies

Don’t overlook your defect list. Sure, you’ve got them rounded up and you might even have a person assigned to them, but like zombie dust bunnies they have a way of lying dormant, inviting you to overlook them and leave them to their quiet half-life, eating up space in your defect database and forcing you to get creative in your filters to push them out of the way in your reports. You can get rid of this innocent looking dead weight. Publish the obituary in the release notes under “known issues” and close the defects as “not a defect” or some other category that demonstrates their dead state. Make sure that you reference the release note version and date in your defect comments.

Zombie self defense: work together

Are there objections to leaving a defect unfixed? See if the objectors are willing to become stakeholders for the reanimated issue. Can you assign this to a specific future release? Can you hold a final defect decision meeting where the stakeholders make up or down decisions on each issue forcing the undead into the light of day? Remember, according to Tracy Wilson of howstuffworks.com, you should avoid the common mistake of letting personal feelings or arguments drive your zombie fighting team apart. (She also advises not to teach zombies how to use firearms.) It’s a messy business but you’ll all feel better when it’s done.

After the darkest night the sun will rise

Back at your own workstation run a last report and breath in the satisfaction that comes with a clean list of truly live issues that have assignments and release date expectations. Send out that project follow up email that declares the end of the zombie project and congratulates your fellows for the work accomplished. You’ll find yourself looking forward to the new start of the next phase or project, free and clear of the issues that haunted you before. Your project is dead. Long live the new project!

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