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Announcing the KDE Quality Team Project
Posted by
michael
on Tue Mar 02, 2004 04:30 PM
from the quality-is-priority-1 dept.
from the quality-is-priority-1 dept.
Quique writes "The KDE Community is pleased to announce the launch of the Quality Team Project, a community of contributors who will serve as a gateway between developers and users in the KDE Project, and as a new way for people to begin contributing. KDE is a very attractive project, offering high quality software and is freely available. There is a lot of people who feel the urge to give something back, but stop in the middle of the way, frustrated by the steep learning curve. The aim of the project is to reduce these barriers by welcoming these potential contributors, and by offering documentation, support, and even guidance if requested. The objective is to support the new contributors, (programmers, documenters, testers, artists...). Have you ever wished to help KDE in some way, but never knew how? Keep reading!"
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Shouldn't that be... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Shouldn't that be... (Score:5, Funny)
KDE Kuality Klan
aka, the KKK.. wait, nevermind
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Re:Shouldn't that be... (Score:5, Interesting)
I had this idea after reading Eric Raymond's "Luxury of Ignorance".
At absolute minimum all open-source projects should have (pet) lamas assigned to them, and a continuously rotating basis (to prevent tainting them with knowledge) and their whining should be taken as the word of authority...
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Re:Shouldn't that be... (Score:5, Funny)
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This is EXACTLY what open source needs! (Score:5, Insightful)
Allow me to use Slashdot as an example. Wednesday nights = push development into production. Anyone on the slashteam want to tell me what regression testing tools and system testers they use? Sure, usually (not always) there isn't a crash-and-burn build, but occasionally there is annoyances and such that are just 'thrown into' the build that people didn't know was coming and other things.
Granted, this is Robs code, let him do what he wants with it, but with a 'QA' step it just makes for a better product.
Re:This is EXACTLY what open source needs! (Score:5, Insightful)
Not to mention, produce a better product for the rest of us.
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Re:This is EXACTLY what open source needs! (Score:5, Funny)
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Well, maybe not exactly... (Score:5, Interesting)
Being a 10 year veteran of QA/Testing and holding a CS degree, I have long wondered where QA would fit into OSS. And by "QA" I don't just mean testing, there is a lot more to it than that. Here are some topics that would need to be addressed:
What is the development process? Is it documented?
What types of estimation procedures do you do?
What is the SCM process? Is it documented?
What is the review/inspection process for all artifacts?
Are there software requirements? Are they inspected/reviewed?
Are there development plans/design docs? Are they inspected/reviewed?
Are there code reviews?
What are your defect escape rates?
What is your plan for alpha/beta testing?
What is your release schedule?
I think I could go on, but you get the idea. If you want solid, defect-finding, QA people who can improve your product, you'll be asked questions like these. If you just want someone who will run a few regression tests against your product before you put it on a website, then you are looking for some software testers. I am not saying that all of those things are necessary, but they might be. Maybe all of this stuff is archaic and applies only to the proprietary model, I don't know. I know that is what I have worked in for the last 10 years. I don't know if anyone has asked these questions of an OSS project, or done any research into if they need to be asked.
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Re:Well, maybe not exactly... (Score:5, Insightful)
It has been my experience as well that people often confuse "testing for defects" with "quality assurance." The former is doing something to figure out if what you made (note the past tense) is ready for release. The latter is a process or set of processes that assures (or attempts to) that the output of your development cycle has quality. Testing is really only a phase of the entire quality assurance process.
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Re:Well, maybe not exactly... (Score:5, Insightful)
I should point out that most of those topics are rather equivalent to just one:
It's worse than that for FOSS, because the available total man-hours must be scaled by the funness of the task. Programming is more fun than debugging, which is itself more fun than reviewing requirement documents or measuring escaped defects. In paid work, testers are cheaper to hire than coders; but on a volunteer basis, testers can be harder to attract because the job is less emotionally rewarding.
But, always remember that in many Open Source efforts, the users are the testers. That's a valid viewpoint if something is free; Microsoft is excoriated when they periodically lure customers into paying to become testers, but the practice is more defensible when no money changes hands.
If you want solid, defect-finding, QA people who can improve your product, you'll be asked questions like these.
And yet, corporations that have an affirmative answer to everything you listed have still proven themselves fully capable of producing code that's absolute garbage. The public at large might not be aware of this, as the truely bad code dies before making it out the door. Someone who works in the industry will see veracity in the quote "Most software projects fail [ibm.com]".
Additionally, the themes of Superprogrammer vs The Horde" [indiana.edu] are relevant to understanding why. Having seen a few SEI CMM 5 shops in action, it's clear that to fill the man-hours for all the redudant tasks requires hiring a grade of developer that's frankly sub-par. Programming is the one field where a true 20x productivity differential between two professionals is unremarkable. It seems that the prominent Open Source projects have gotten more attention from generous SuperProgrammers than a typical commercial developement is able to attract.
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Re:Well, maybe not exactly... (Score:5, Interesting)
All of your points are of course valid - for the state of OSS today. I am more interested in the OSS of *tomorrow*. At least my hope for tomorrow - when OSS becomes more prevalent. How will QA/testing fit into OSS vs FOSS? When someone *IS* paying the bills, how will things change?
Additionally, the themes of Superprogrammer vs The Horde" are relevant to understanding why. Having seen a few SEI CMM 5 shops in action, it's clear that to fill the man-hours for all the redudant tasks requires hiring a grade of developer that's frankly sub-par. Programming is the one field where a true 20x productivity differential between two professionals is unremarkable. It seems that the prominent Open Source projects have gotten more attention from generous SuperProgrammers than a typical commercial developement is able to attract.
Of course. But those big projects have to ensure they can survive if their superstar programmer leaves. Or they do it because they are government regulated, or they are building software that could be life or death, and they can't afford to rely on someone's opinion. You have to remember that there is a LOT of software out there, it ain't all word processors and games. These are the applications where I question if open source is the way to go. I don't think it is the be-all-end-all of software development, just like being CMM level 5 isn't either. There is a reality out there, and I think Slashdot users could use a little check every now and then.
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Re:Well, maybe not exactly... (Score:5, Insightful)
FOSS tend to be small groups, with small projects. And there is no insane pressure from management to let releases escape to early.
It would be nice to have some dedicated testers around to do smoke tests and general usablity tests. In general FOSS projects rely on the users to want to run the bleeding edge code and test that. But in my experience a group of good testers is the best bang for the buck beyond starting with great programmers.
To the specific points:
>What is the development process? Is it documented?
The development process is pretty typical. Check out any successful project on SourceForge. No need for QA audit role. There's no management around to muck things up, the engineers are in charge.
> What types of estimation procedures do you do?
Irrelevant. It gets done when it gets done. If you pay for the development one can do better... you can audit those circumstances, but in general, don't need QA audit role here.
> What is the SCM process? Is it documented?
CVS or subversion and bugzilla or some such is typically the tool. Much of the SCM process probably depends on the distribution that actually packages the code. Might be Debian's release process. Anyway this is pretty well defined too...
> What is the review/inspection process for all artifacts?
There are usually a few "stars" writing all the code. They can tell crap from not. And if it's crap it probably doesn't work, so no one is going to use it. So you find out one way or another. Reviews of code might help but in general it doesn't matter. If it works well, and the people maintaining it can read it, we're OK. The project will die its natural death otherwise (just like proprietary software... actually its death is usually prolonged too far...).
> Are there software requirements? Are they inspected/reviewed?
What gets implemented is what the creator needs and sounds cool or seems OK and is contributed. Unless someone is paying, in which case this might be useful. But in general, no role for QA here.
> Are there development plans/design docs? Are they inspected/reviewed?
Informal probably. Small team, might trade mockups of screens or working prototype code around. Back of the napkin kind of stuff. Probably works OK for most projects. Wouldn't fly a plane that way though
> Are there code reviews?
Hahah. And you and I both know they don't really matter anyway unless you're dealing with poor programming ability, in which case you're screwed anyway... what are you going to do, fire the volunteer programmer from his own project?
Code reviews don't find bugs. You might be able to get more conformity to the coding guidelines if any that way. But in general, many projects enforce their guidelines by having few people allowed to check in. And good programmers go with the flow as far as code formatting anyway.
> What are your defect escape rates?
Escape rates? Must be some QA auditor speak. Does that mean bugs V&V didn't find before release? Anyway, Not interesting... If the stuff doesn't work people won't use it. It will die a natural death.
> What is your plan for alpha/beta testing?
Release early, release often but maintain a good stable release if you're changing things rapidly. Don't need QA to tell us engineers how to do that.
> What is your release schedule?
Irrelevant. It's done when it's done unless someone's paying.
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Re:This is EXACTLY what open source needs! (Score:5, Insightful)
more importantly is the new developer relations.
lots of big oss projects suffer from poor developer doco, wildly-divergent coding standards and a lack of anything vaguely looking like project management. have you ever tried to bust into the mozilla code? it's easier to become a mason!
in the proprietary world of software, new hires get weeks of training to explain the ins and outs of the source tree, the preferred tools, the internal standards &c. this is done not just to get said hires up to speed and productive as quickly as possible but also to ensure that their contributions don't damage the conceptual integrity of the project.
smart move kde.
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Re:Will testing fix (Score:5, Informative)
This is a legitimate problem, though getting much better. With prelinking, load times are closer to 2-3 seconds rather than 5-10.
* The 4 second load time just to open a folder
Depends on the size of the folder. Normal-sized folders open pretty much instantly on my machine. Performance on large folders (/usr/bin with thousands of items) could be improved, though.
* The cramped and embarrassing K menu, with a 100 different groups and completely illogical redundancies like "Preferences," "System Settings," and "Control Center"
Um, my stock Debian KMenu has a dozen folders. "Preferences" is gone in 3.2. There is a "settings" folder and a "system" folder, which is logical --- one is for preferences, the other is for system utilities. Kinda analagous to Windows's "Control Panel" and "Accessories/System Tools" And "Control Center" is an entry in "Settings"! Are you sure you're not mistaking the quick- access area at the top for default menu items? And the categories seem perfectly logical to me. "Graphics," "internet," "multimedia," etc. Sounds perfectly logical to me. Certainly, more logical than the Windows method of giving each company a top-level entry in the menu.
* The poor naming scheme that--despite close to five years of bitching--hasn't been changed in favor of something sane
KDE will drop the 'k' when GNOME drops the 'g', Apple drops the 'i', and Microsoft drops the 'MS'. Remember, its "MS Word" not just "Word."
* The convoluted Control Center that is an example of poor interface design with 3,000 items and subitems, grouped together under a cursor that for some reason won't stop changing to the hand icon
Actually, having all preferences in one program seems a lot more easy to navigate for me than a folder full of applets, one for each task. Work is on-going to make KControl more logical (there was an OSNews entry recently) but the "centralized control" aspect will remain. And Microsoft does it too --- consider the Windows NT administration console.
* The fact that the cursor changes to a hand icon when it moves over taskbar buttons (cursor changes are confusing, disorienting, and annoying to newbies and power users alike)
The cursor changes to know when you can click on something. And you pulled that "cursor changes are confusing" thing out of your ass. People manage to use Internet Explorer on a daily basis with the cursor changing over links. You just don't like it because its different from what you're used to.
* The fact that when you tell KDE to put application menus at the top like MacOS...which is faster than slowing the cursor and pinpointing a menu in a floating window like in WindowsWorks fine on my machine. I'm guessing that you're not running 3.2...
* The seeming need for every new version of KDE to add five more sidebars, buttons, and features to KPanel/Konquerer/anything else beginning with K, instead of cleaning the interface and making things faster
Every release of KDE since 2.0 has gotten faster. Every release of KDE since 3.0 has become more streamlined.
I could go on and on. I don't get why it is so slow.
KDE isn't slow. Its got slow load-times for applications, but everything else is fast. In terms of user responsiveness, I find KDE to be faster than XP. In terms of redraw, KDE is even faster than XP. For example, try opening up two IE windows to Slashdot, one on top of the other. Resizing the top window will cause the bottom window blank --- for several seconds if you do it at the right speed. On my KDE, Konqueror doesn't do that.
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KDE Quality Team? (Score:5, Funny)
Bout Time (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Bout Time (Score:5, Interesting)
It is my experience also from the IRC channel that the KDE developers are great guys and girls -- a few of them even hang out and help users with their stupid problems (ok, s/users/me/, s/their/my/
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Re:First thing to fix (Score:5, Funny)
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go install Gaim, Gnumeric, Galeon, Grhino and Gtetrinet (gnome version of tetrinet, an internet tetris game).
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Re:First thing to fix (Score:4, Funny)
Koffice - A cough you get at the office? :)
Killustrator - Shows you how to kill trators?
Kougar - Another name for KMountainLion?
Kroupware - For when you need to collaborate when you have a bad cough. Especially if it's that Koffice you cought (see above).
Kallery - No idea. I can't think of a pun. It must be a bad name
KTetris - No puns here either.
-- A KDE user (and lover) with Karma to burn
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Re:First thing to fix (Score:4, Funny)
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i hope these guys will integrate with kde-redhat (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:i hope these guys will integrate with kde-redha (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:i hope these guys will integrate with kde-redha (Score:5, Insightful)
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On the heels of ESR (Score:5, Informative)
I'd like to see some of the numerous UI critics take part in this. You know, the ones who write scathing reviews of widgets and fonts like Eurgenia?
Re:On the heels of ESR (Score:4, Informative)
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Kuality (Score:4, Funny)
KDE Kuality Projekt
Someone read ESR's rant (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Someone read ESR's rant (Score:5, Insightful)
As an open source author and member of a quality assurance team, experience tells me that the greatest effort will go into programming. QA teams generally have enough work to do just fixing bugs, writing documentation and testing releases ("important stuff"), that not enough time is left for making the user interface uniform or even intuitive. In this case, though they are asking users for direct input on the topic. That's a good sign.
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GNOME has had a quality team for years. (Score:5, Informative)
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Build it, and they won't come.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds like KDE is looking for folks to come along and do all the thankless, boring shit. Spellchecking help files, testing obscure check boxes, applying different themes. Of course, all the cool design work and programming, and artistry, etc, will be done by the core team - who will, of course, accept all the credit.
Noone wants to do the monkey work. I don't want to test constantly, read bug reports, track down insignificant bugs in code thats unused 99.9% of the time. I only do so because it's my job.
Which is a shame for open source in general, because it's that QA step, all the thankless hours of gruntwork, that make the final product what it is.
Re:Build it, and they won't come.. (Score:5, Interesting)
I have done exactly that kind of shitty grunt work for a number of open source projects, without expecting any credit or whatever. For one reason, the one you stated:
it's that QA step, all the thankless hours of gruntwork, that make the final product what it is
I believe in open source, and am willing to further the cause just to further the cause, not to further my own ego.
I, for one, will join the KDE Quality (Kuality?) Team.
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Pffffftt! (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Build it, and they won't come.. (Score:5, Informative)
Sounds like KDE is looking for folks to come along and do all the thankless, boring shit.
You have it totally backward, actually. The Quality Team project was intiated to include the large number of non-developer people who have been saying that they've always wanted to help KDE, but don't know how. KDE-QT provides a framework to actually include these interested and passionate contributors into our project.
They asked for a project like this.
So you see the QT tasks as boring grunt-work. Fine, then maybe KDE-QT is not for you. But there are those who excel at this kind of thing, and actually enjoy it.
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Re:Build it, and they won't come.. (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Build it, and they won't come.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually it seems someone do want: otherwise how could many open source projects like Apache, Samba, linux (!!!) become what they are?
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Re:Build it, and they won't come.. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Build it, and they won't come.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Or OS/X. They took an OSS platform and layed a slick, highly integrated and very stylish UI on top of it. In about a quarter of the time that various linux desktop projects have been around. What's the difference?
Legions of grunts whos daily bread relied on toeing the company line, testing what they were told to test, documenting what they were told to document.
I wish this project all success, but I'm skeptical. Contributing programming or artistic skills for free makes sense. After all, programmers like programming, artists like drawing.
But noone likes doing gruntwork. Noone really dances on their way to work at McDonalds. We'll see in the end.
An aunt of mine was as veterinarian, she ran a small animal hospital. She'd have two or three high school girls apply to volunteer there each week, girls are goofy at the idea of hugging puppies.
They wouldn't show up again after the first time they had to do the actual work, say, clean up after a Great Dane with a case of diarreah.
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Re:Build it, and they won't come.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Marketing.
I HAVE tried WinXP and MacOSX and both leave a lot to be desired.
There is just no good substitute for multiple desktops with good session management like KDE has. Also Unix-style copy/paste is much faster and more comfortable than MacOS-style (which was copied by Windows) because you don't have to switch nearly as often between keyboard and mouse. Of course KDE supports both copy/paste schemes, so you are not forced to use Unix-style. Real 3-button support is another thing. For example I can open a folder in the filemanager in a new tab with the MMB, or I can jump to a position on a scrollbar with the MMB, or I can push back a window with the MMB.
But of course, marketing has told you that all those features are "for geeks" only and Windows/MacOS is the best there is - so often that people started to believe it. You don't even need examples, facts or reasons!
KDE doesn't have any usability problems, period. I've seen newbies pull hairs because of the numerous single-click/double-click inconsistencies in Windows (why do I have to single-click an icon on a toolbar but double-click an icon on the desktop? What moron invented that scheme?) which don't exist in KDE, at least not in the default configuration.
I have now presented 5 examples of KDE superiority (multiple desktops, session management, copy-paste, 3-mouse button support and single-click consistency), you have prestented nothing, zero, nada. Probably because you have never used KDE and have no idea what you are talking about.
What indeed is a problem is missing and incomplete documentation. Another is missing Win32 binary compatibility especially for games. That and that alone is keeping Linux/KDE off the masses desktops.
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Middlemen? Where have I heard this before..? (Score:5, Funny)
Tom Smykowski: Well-well look. I already told you: I deal with the god damn customers so the engineers don't have to. I have people skills; I am good at dealing with people. Can't you understand that? What the hell is wrong with you people?
This is what Open Source needs (Score:5, Insightful)
I think this is exactly what open source needs. It's one thing for programmers, sysadmins and advanced users to contribute to open source projects, but there's often no easy way for the average user to help out.
With ideas like KDE Quality Team, the developers get to hear from the users and integrate features that they would like to see, as well as providing a means by which the average user can contribute. That's why Wikipedia works so well - it is possible for anybody to contribute. It's great to see the "anybody can contribute" idea extend to open source where up till now it's really only the advanced users who can contribute easily.
Re:This is what Open Source needs (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a reason for that: average users can find bugs, but cannot report them without having a programmer or an advanced user looking over their shoulder. An average user doesn't think through things logically enough to be able to isolate problems or to come up with the steps needed to consistently reproduced a bug.
You might say, "But the average user doesn't need to know those things! He just needs to report the bug and the programmers will research it and fix it." That's nonsense. A bug report from an average user (if he files one at all) is likely to be along the lines of "A program crashed when I clicked on a menu item." And when you ask for more details, he has forgotten which menu item he clicked on, he has forgotten the error message, he doesn't even know which version he was running. At best you might figure out which OS he uses, but that's it.
QA testing can be done by average users only if they are closely monitored by programmers or advanced users. There needs to be an advanced, knowledgable user present to watch the novice use the program and see how he uses the software. The KDE Quality Team might get some work done--for example, average users could easily locate and point out misspellings or other errors in the help files or dialog box messages--but don't think for a moment that KDE is tapping a great heretofore unused resource. The quality of the feedback generated by the KDE Quality Team will likely be low.
What we really need is to have local LUGs sponsor QA seminars. Get all the local geeks to bring a friend who has never used KDE. Sit them all down in front of a brand new installation of the latest KDE and ask them to perform simple tasks similar to what they would do at home using Windows. (Burn a CD, search the web, etc.) Watch them closely and take notes every time they find a bug or unexpected behavior. Compile that information and submit the necessary bug reports. Now that information will be truly useful.
Disclaimer: I could be wrong about everything. It's not likely, but it's happened before.
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Nice idea (Score:5, Interesting)
Got to give KDE credit.. (Score:5, Insightful)
For a social scientist's perspective... (Score:4, Interesting)
Some people might find it interesting...
Task allocation! (Score:4, Interesting)
I've tried to manage a project, in a similar way, on a very small scale though (~30 people). Everybody wanted to own the coolest parts of the project. What I eventually ended up doing is tying cool parts with not-so-cool parts. So, if you choose the cool part, you automatically also own the corresponding not-so-cool part.
I'm looking for more ideas. May be some brainstorming would help here.
The Quality Team is not a QA project (Score:5, Informative)
I am the one who is currently putting the most effort into the KDE Quality Team implementation, so I am qualified to speak for the project:
Let's start by making something clear:
The main idea is not to build a QA project inside KDE. The main idea is to support and embrace new contributors with any background, and help to organize their efforts. For instance: Any doubts about the docbook? We are glad to help. Do you want feedback on your work? We are happy to provide. Looking for guidance? Hop in!
We don't want to point what is good for you: we try to present you with a long list of things one can do to help, and organize these efforts.
The recommended approach for non programmers is different from other projects: it is more like the project manager in a company than of a task specialist. In other words think of acting upon the whole of Kontact instead of acting upon the context help for the whole KDE project. We recognize that the main tool for helping an application is knowing it well. A quick look at the activities list, presenting the requirements for performing the tasks, is sufficient to prove that.
http://quality.kde.org/develop/modules/ [kde.org]
Yes, the activities include QA. But this is just one of the activities. Hope this helps to avoid confusion with GNOME's bugsquad (also nice, but not related: it is a different concept).
Re:USABILITY - FINALLY ! (Score:5, Funny)
Rather, if you mean the relative amount of time it seems that I've been thrashing around in the 'quirkiness' (to be polite) that is the linux desktop
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Re:Quality Team? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Sounds Good (Score:4, Informative)
I think it's a little different. Consider this:
Start subscribing to the KDE Quality Team Mailing List [kde.org] and announce yourself...
If you know what application you want to work with, and what you want to do, check the KDE Quality Team HOWTO [kde.org] for tips and information about the task you want to perform. If you don't know yet, you mask the list for guidance, and read the Quality Team Tasks Page [kde.org] to find out what kind of activity you like best and the requirements to perform this task. Each activity has a different set of requirements. For instance, to be a KDE unstable tester, it is necessary to know how to compile KDE unstable [kde.org].
First of all, in my [somewhat limited] experience with QA, technical writing, and other non-development tasks, these people in general are not really friendly with mailing lists. That's a first turn off. I think an NNTP server would be a better solution. Second, this is targeted towards developers and extremely advanced users who will read all of the HOWTOs, rules, directions, etc. and memorize them to avoid getting flamed by others. Regular users don't do these things, they just click on pretty buttons.
I'm not saying this is wrong, it's just not for average joes out there.
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Some backgound information about KDE and usability (Score:5, Informative)
KDE has User Interface Guidelines since more than 4 years. These guidelines are a bit outdated, but they are followed by almost all applications within KDE. This is one of the reasons why KDE applications are quite consistent with each other. KDE has been dedicated towards usability since its foundation, but usability was never the only goal. KDE was never perfect, but its usability has been constantly improving every version. Compared to most other PC software, KDE has always been doing reasonably well in terms of usability.
True. The GNOME project made a good decision when they introduced HIG, even if many GNOME users were very angry at the time. Removing functionality was one of the main methods of solving GNOME's early usability problems, which should only be done if there is really no other way to solve usability problems.
Most people complaining about KDE's usability are suggesting the same strategy for KDE. I don't agree with this. Solving usability issues in other ways is more difficult and takes more time, but the end result will be better if we stop telling others "I know better than you that you don't need this". But anyway, I agree that having good user interface guidelines is important.
My impression is very different. The Quality team idea has been greeted with a lot of very positive responses among the KDE developers. There is a lot of interest in this within the KDE project.
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