QA != Testing 342
gManZboy writes "Original author of Make and IBM Researcher, Stu Feldman has written an overview of what should be (but is sadly perhaps not) familiar ground to many Slashdotters: Quality Assurance. He argues that QA is not equivalent to 'testing', and also addresses the oft-experienced (apparent) conflict between QA-advocates and 'buisiness goals.'"
Requirements? (Score:4, Interesting)
QA is described as making sure a project is "measurably meeting expectations and conforming to requirements"
At my job, requirements are often one-sentence requests with no needed detail whatsoever. If it then doesn't go to a business analyst in the IT department, that's what the programmers work from. When the QA process starts, it makes it easy to say that you've complied with all details of the requirements.
Re:Requirements? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Requirements? (Score:4, Informative)
The QA process should start right at the beginning of the project, when you are developing the requirements (i.e. before the specification is created).
You are not using QA at your company. If you were, then you would have a proper, detailed specification and list of requirements, which benefits everyone (the customer, the designers, the testers - everyone).
Re:Requirements? (Score:5, Informative)
There are two parts to quality. The second part of the IEEE definition is "The degree to which a system, component, or process meets customer or user needs or expectations".
Although Feldman leaves out the second part (I believe it comes from another standard), he alludes to its importance in his discussion of how stringent QA must be, indicating that software for different purposes will have different quality requirements according to the needs of its users.
Quality Assurance is not possible in the absence of requirements and specifications. Although we (the company I work for) often receive requirements with minimal detail, we have addressed the quality problem by writing a (relatively) detailed specification up front, and presenting it to the customer. Effectively we're saying "this is what you're going to get for your money, okay?". It's just prudent practice, but it gives us a goal and a way to achieve quality (by both definitions).
You can find more on the combining the technical and business approaches to quality in my essay The Quality Gap [crypt.co.za].
Re:Requirements? (Score:3, Insightful)
Then you just have to convince everyone to stick to what they've agreed to when they ask you to change everyth
Re:Requirements? (Score:2)
I've found prototypes are more useful in a JAD context. They're at least as effective as use cases at gathering requirements for applications that are mostly interactive.
Currently I use specifications because we're working with non-interactive software than integrates with a number of other systems, and needs its processing behaviour to be very precisely understood.
That's a fairly specialised environment, but for more general contexts I have found use cases to be particularly effective. Of course, I c
Re:Requirements? (Score:3, Insightful)
In that case you have a specification! In the form of your static prototype.
Nowehere does it say that a specification HAS to be solely a written document...
Prototype != Specification (Score:3, Insightful)
A prototype and a specification do not contain the same information. A prototype consists of a single concrete instance of the thing a specification describes. It contains more information than the specification in some respects (the concrete design choices the implementor has made to fill in the gaps the specification is silent on) but more importantly it is also missing information that is absolutely required in a specificatio
Re:Requirements? (Score:3, Interesting)
Depends on what you are building. On some of my past products, I've used prototypes. We have a project here that has is really heavy on UI and has a massive prototyping effort going back and forth between Human Factors, Product Manager, and Engineering.
On the other hand, I am currently on a project where a static prototype would not be of any value. The user interface is a tiny part of the project. Also, the requirements a
Re:Requirements? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Requirements? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Requirements? (Score:3, Interesting)
Sometimes formal QA is needed, sometimes not. (Score:4, Interesting)
We also tended to work directly with a dedicated set of business analysts who were also quite experienced, being dedicated "end users" from various operational areas, and it was a collaborative effort to design and implement projects large and small.
After years of working with the same experienced people, the system worked *very* well. We had processes in place to help ensure that proper testing and documentation was done and that no unauthorized production loads were made -- otherwise, we basically trusted people to use their best judgement.
Since the folks who were writing the code were also supporting the application 24x7 on a rotating basis, they had a vested interest in keeping the system stable.
I think that demonstrated (at least to me) that sometimes a full-blown separate QA process isn't required. By doing things in a somewhat abbreviated way, however, the group was a lot more agile, and quality fixes could literally be coded and loaded in a matter of hours (in some cases).
When I worked for Unisys on application development for paying customers, however, we had a much more formalized process. We had dedicated business analysts writing the func specs, programmer/analysts to write code to those specs, and dedicated QA people who designed and helped implement formal test scripts (both manual and automated) before the product was rolled out.
The size of the group and the nature of the product made that level of QA more important, I think, but it was also implemented knowing that the software development cycle in place was a slow and deliberate process.
Moral of the story: Maintaining a local system for internal corporate use is sometimes a VERY different process from developing commercial software for external customer use, and the two situations can sometimes differ greatly in approach while still maintaining a very high level of quality.
I also think it depends quite a bit on the quality of the people you have in place, and also on the level of experience those people have with the product, the technology, and in working with each other. Experienced people can work wonders if you let them.
Re:Requirements? (Score:2)
Code is delivered that meets the requirements document, but does nothing whatsoever for the users.
Re:Requirements? (Score:2, Funny)
Reminds me of my first programming job. For five years I worked for a boss, who only drew screenshots and then said: "Program this".
Re:Requirements? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Requirements? (Score:2)
It's your job as a developer to let the person writing the requirements know that you need more information. A good requirement has 3 properties:
Quality? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Quality? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Quality? (Score:5, Insightful)
BOVE'S THEOREM: The remaining work to finish in order to reach your goal increases as the deadline approaches.
PARKINSON'S LAW: Work expands to fill the time available for its completion.
Re:Quality? (Score:5, Interesting)
PARKINSON'S LAW: Work expands to fill the time available for its completion.
This is why I don't believe in deadlines (to a degree).
_Everything_ is a work in progress, deadlines are rarely met, or if they are the stress and rush is rarely worth the satisfaction of meeting the deadline.
I would strongly recommend all people to read How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life [amazon.com]. The guy is annoyingly into time management. Its his fulltime job! He sets his watch 3 minutes fast so he's "ahead of the world", and always takes advantage of those 5 or so minute waits to make lists of things to do and whatnot. But here is the best thing I got from the book. Keep in mind that this dude is anally retentive -- bigtime.
He lets his employees bring pleasure stuff to work with them, and as soon as they finish what they are tasked to do he lets them read, do puzzles, sew, or whatever they want while at work.
My jaw dropped when I was reading those pages. That did not make any sense to me whatsoever.
Then he said why. He said that if he gave someone a set time to do something, they would stretch it out to finish exactly at that time. By letting people not have a deadline and do something they want to do when finished with their work, he was actually able to get _more_ work out of them. It was also clear to him without taking any of his time to tell when his employees were done with their work and could be tasked with something else. Completely without any communication.
A side benefit, is that the employees actually feel more free, and get their work done in a more timely manor than if he gave them a deadline.
Re:Quality? (Score:3)
Um.. Not everything, not by a long shot, and it's rarely about the satisfaction or meeting a deadline. It depends greatly on the kind of software you are writing, and the immediate goals of the larger system the software is part of.
F'rinstance; the software that drove the missile fire control system I worked with. Sure, overall it was a constant work
Re:Quality? (Score:2)
So:
Quality = Knowledgeable_Staff_On_Good_Salary + Knowledgeable_Staff_On_Good_Salary_Influenced_Dea d lines
No matter how hard some business weanie up the food chain wishes not to pay people good, the hard fact is in QA you have to pay people enough to care what they are doing. QA work can be extremely boring and tedious. To get this done right the people need to be compensat
Re:Quality? (Score:3, Insightful)
Milestones keep the development on track, and deadlines are used in projectplanning to determine an end state for the development project.
Besides all this, lots'o'time doesn't give you quality, necessarily. Look at knowledgable modern artists; all the time in the world, and all they produce is a pile [maximonline.com] of crap [sprynet.com].
Re:Quality? (Score:2)
Milestones are OK but mandated ones just create shoddy code as everyone chucks everything in to make the artificial deadline.. I've seen it happen.. the 'woo, we made the milestone' feeling, followed by the sinking feeling when you realize that the resultant mess barely compiles.
Re:Quality? (Score:3, Informative)
a) Knowledgeable staff on average salary + unrealistic deadlines, somehow managing to motivate themselves to do a good job
and then
b) Average management using the abilities of said knowledgeable staff, getting all the praise for the projects somehow coming in on time, and getting a huge pay rise for their "efforts".
I think I may be getting just a little bitter and twisted about my career prospects.
Capability Maturity Model (Score:4, Interesting)
The SEI [cmu.edu] was approached by the military a couple decades ago. The military had a problem; when it contracted out software development work, it would sometimes get back what it was looking for, it would sometimes get it on time. Sometimes it was late, sometimes it didn't work, sometimes it did the wrong thing, and sometimes they got nothing at all.
The SEI went about polling a large number of contractors, trying to see what was common amongst the ones who delivered. They found there was actually a very strong correllation between a number of processes and practices and high-quality under-budget software. The result is the Capability Maturity Model [cmu.edu] or CMM for short, which divides companies up into 5 "levels".
The kind of organization you describe is quite definately a "level 1" company, the kind with the highest risk, and the lowest quality. Most companies, even small ones, should strive to follow the practices of at least level 3, as the benefits are quite tangible; no more late projects, and vastly fewer defects.
I mentioned it in another post, but my dad [thedreaming.org] has a good web site [thedreaming.org] that deals with quality issues (IE only, unfortunately). And, if you're looking to improve the quality of your software, his current contract is going to expire soon.
Re:Capability Maturity Model (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, I use it and am in a certified team. It's vastly overrated, and no substitue at all for people who know what they're doing. It might complement people who know what they're doing, but then such people would have come up with their own valid processes anyway, hence your initial correlation.
And it's hardly helped the US military come in on time and under-budget, now has it?
!
Cheers,
Ian
Re:Capability Maturity Model (Score:5, Insightful)
I worked for a DoD contractor for a while, so I've seen it from the inside -- and, I'd say that using DoD-funded development projects as a measure of anything is ludicrous. Years after my DoD experience, I remember interviewing for a lead hardware engineer. I needed a guy who could build a Z80-based microcontroller board. I had one tech to give him, that's it. And, I needed the board laid out and working in 4 months. I knew this was possible, because I had worked with plenty of hardware engineers who could do this in their sleep, with one layout and no rework. Remember, this is 4mhz, folks. Crosstalk? What crosstalk? Hell, armed with a book and help from the vendor in the form of boilerplate designs, even I could have taken a stab at it, and the last time I hacked hardware was years ago in a college course.
Anyway, this guy was from a large defense contractor, R******n. Turns out he was PART OF A TEAM that had built a Z80 CPU board over the last 18 months. His particular responsibility had been the DRAM circuit. According to him there were 20 other hardware engineers on the project. Yup, he said TWENTY. That's right. T-W-E-N-T-Y.
The $64,000 question is, what the heck was this guy doing for those 18 months? I was stunned. So was he, when he realized what was expected of him in the "real" world. I don't care how MIL-spec'd his board had to be, or how much vibration and radiation testing they had to do, or how many $22,000 toilets they had to flush it down to test it, 18 months and 20 people is ridiculous. Period.
I found someone else for the position. He built the board, delivered it ahead of schedule, and it worked fine. And while he was doing that, in parallel he designed and built another board for an RF hand-held. I guess he wouldn't have fit in at R******n. Nothing against R******n, though. Largest employer in the state. Love you guys. Keep everyone working.
Re:Capability Maturity Model (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm sure the irony of that statement is not lost on anyone. A site, giving advice on good quality, is itself a quality disaster. You'll understand if I don't take his credentials to heart.
Re:Capability Maturity Model (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Capability Maturity Model (Score:5, Insightful)
Having worked in a CMM 3 company for a couple years, my opinions of the thing are quite different: CMM, and processes in general, are a tool that managers use to offload their work on the engineers.
We used to spend vast amounts of time peer reviewing all sorts of useless documents, making estimates for project planning, and so on, additionally to the architecture and coding work.
This didn't do anything at all for quality. Deadlines slipped like always (often more, because of the time lost to irrelevant stuff). Spec documents were just as Ground-Control-To-Major-Tom-like as usual.
It did, however, give the managers the warm fuzzy feeling that overcomes control freaks everywhere when they're sure they can track, number, file and index everything that goes on around them. Without having to do any actual work. Without even knowing the first thing about the product we were making (without CMM, a prerequisite for anyone attempting to write any sort of project plan).
One of our line managers admitted all of this quite openly, one of his favourite sayings was "Since we have processes, I can go home at four every day". We didn't. We got to stay till 8.
In my experience, CMM should be avoided like the plague. It's complete and utter waste of time, and encourages empty hierarchies.
Re:Capability Maturity Model (Score:5, Insightful)
a) It looks good to our customers.
b) It reduces our cost.
Companies that strive for motive A often will do their best to meet the requirements of CMM to the letter, without actually changing what they do on a day to day basis. "CMM says we need to have a baseline and configuration management for our code, so I want everyone to check their work into this new CVS thing, at least once a month", for example.
It's easy to "meet the letter" of CMM without at all meeting the intent. At my company, for example, there's a core group who is trying to push "scrum" [versionone.net] as a software development methodology, and they make all kinds of bizzare claims that this is somehow consistent with CMM 3, pointing to specific wording within CMM, and making claims that such and such is equivalent to CMM, even if it doesn't quite meet it. Meanwhile, I try to envision a mission critical system like a 767, or a space shuttle, or an ambulance dispatch service produced with scrum, and it makes me afraid to go outdoors.
Some people are afraid of change.
Re:Capability Maturity Model (Score:3, Interesting)
What was your improvement in productivity, and how was it measured? What was the reduction in your (delivered defects):(effort expended) ratio? What was the reduction in your (lines of code delivered):(effort) ratio? One or both of these ratios have to go down.
If you don't have these numbers, you can't really say you've improved productivity, especially with a process like Scrum. Scrum makes it very easy to t
Neither necessary nor sufficient (Score:4, Informative)
I will agree that ignorant staff will degrade or kill quality, poor pay doesn't help, but tight deadlines can cut either way.
The real key to quality products of any type is:
1) deciding what you want to build, and deciding exactly (i.e., good specs);
2) deciding how you want to build it, and deciding exactly (i.e., good architecture);
3) ensuring that these two elements are matched to the capabilities of your team and budget (e.g., don't try to cram all the R3 featuers into R1); and
4) to create feeedback loops throughout the process to check that you are doing what you think you are doing (e.g., peer code review, pair programming, data acquisition and recording in manufacturing processes). Testing should be merely a "double check".
With these steps, and especially ensuring that the demands are only a bit beyond the capabilities of the team, even a basically competent team on modest pay can produce great things in short times.
Without adequate planning, deadlines and QA, the most brilliant, high-paid teams with no deadlines will produce crap, if they produce anything at all. As Sun Tsu said: 'every battle is won before it's fought'.
Re:Neither necessary nor sufficient (Score:4, Insightful)
Too often, I've stumbled across over-specified systems that, as a result, are delivered incredibly late. And then, because of time constraints, the whole project is de-scoped and bodged work-arounds are built so that functionality can be 'added later'.
At the design stage, politics often slows things down. I prefer the continuous approach: When you have enough design, start coding.
Re:Neither necessary nor sufficient (Score:3, Interesting)
There was an article at Slashdot [slashdot.org] quite recently (yesterday) which actually argued, that coding is the real design process. All the other processes would be just tools to help clarify and support the thinking process of the programmer/designer, and not every tool works the same for every programmer/designer.
He even argued that all the new design approaches (rapid prototyping, extreme programming etc.pp.) were just here to allow th
Re:Quality? (Score:2)
That's the typical attitude of a techie: Let me work and you get a result eventually. That's OK if you're in a creative process and milestones are absent.
Science is (or should be) such a field where creativity is highly appreciated and very valuable. In business typically you want to know exactly what you will be delivering, how much it will cost, how much you can charge and when the payments will arrive. If you take a business approach to
To sum it up (Score:5, Informative)
When building software there is a tendency to lump quality assurance and testing together precipitously at the end of a project. The distinction that is made in this article is an important one, true quality and successful projects are obtained by having quality assurance as a project long process. Then you have quality assurance during requirements, design, development and yes even testing.
Good Quality Cuts down or out Testing (Score:4, Insightful)
Apples and Oranges (Score:2)
Let's say what Linus says about QA (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Let's say what Linus says about QA (Score:3, Funny)
Good QA (Score:3, Informative)
It continues constantly until the Project Post Mortem gets reviewed.
QA should be involved in every activity regarding the projet in between. (including reviewing the requirements ellicitation process)
Happily, when I worked in QA (for a telecoms test equipment manufacturer) that was how we did things. We, in QA, were responsible to the QA Director, and the Managing Director, and nobody else - that gets engineering in touch with you early and ofen...
Any chance.. (Score:5, Funny)
It's "business", not "buisiness".
Re:Any chance.. (Score:2)
Re:Any chance.. (Score:2)
QA != Testing (Score:5, Insightful)
testing doesn't make the software any better but testing do find bugs which developers missed. Quality assurance is to make sure that the software is of good enough quality before release and testing does confirm the case.
testing? (Score:4, Informative)
On another note, QA and QM methodes may sound incredibly dull and based upon "duh - how else should I do this, dumbass?", but are in fact highly sophisticated.
Not because they are not readical new, but because they are radically in their consistency. Think of something, and its error and faults, then of their causes, and their effects and impacts. Prefferably add fault probabilities, too. Then start over again.
It is constant feedback throughout the whole design process that is most important.
Show me your regression proofs then :) (Score:2)
Whereas proofs of correctness need to be redone every time you change code.
Test-centric dev (XP, the Agile methodologies) is standard in Java Dev these days, and there are good Python test tools too. Its a shame that C++ has lagged a bit, though CppUnit works well.
We have used CppUnit to test code, with CruiseControl (on sourceforge) to check out, rebuild and re
Re:testing? (Score:2)
Last year we had a quality bozo over from HQ. He explained all the new quality processes to us, and then presented us with an explanatory document that we could keep for reference.
One of his main points had been that all documents must have tracking numbers.
The reference document did not have a tracking number.
I do not think this is very consistent. Evidentally quality is something they bestow upon others, without actually taking part in its processes
Six Sigma (Score:4, Interesting)
This can apply to the way code is written and does in some companies.
Re:Six Sigma (Score:2)
Re:Six Sigma (Score:3, Funny)
The idea is to remove variation so that everything you do is always the same.
They introduced that in a company I once worked for. (Thankfully I'm out.) They did a big presentation to the whole company, telling us how wonderful it was going to be, and explaining that it wasn't about quality but consistency. A voice piped up from the back... "So if every bill goes out 18 months late, we win!"
What is QA Always a Separate Organization? (Score:4, Insightful)
Madness!!
Re:What is QA Always a Separate Organization? (Score:5, Insightful)
In our company QA was a separate organisation, for 3 simple reasons;
1 - you are auditing and commenting on other people's work, not in a peer review "did you think about doing it like this" way, but in a "That is not acceptable; redo" way. Close colleagues in a department are NOT suitable for that role; you cannot be expected to say that about the person in the next cubicle's work, whereas a department with that as their job will be accepted when they do it.
2 - Keeping up to date on the quality requirements, combined with performing your live QA duties for the engineering department was a full time job. Or at least, it certainly was if the company wanted to keep its ISO9001 certification.
3 - Its a case of the buck stopping here. In our company project proposals, requirements and plans HAD to be signed off by QA before the funding got released for the project. At the same time, due to our doing telecoms stuff, we had a legal responsibility to sign off that the EMC conformity, physical safety and electrical safety tests had been conducted properly and passed. (and that meant constantly checking updates of the various national standards to ensure the company standards used the strictest requirements in each case). Random engineer is not good enough. (you have to have passed the right courses to audit each various section, need to be a qualified ISO9001 auditor to do the internal audits for that etc)
Professional QA is a full and seperate job. (but I did get to play with the 20KV discharge equipment!)
If it works it still may not (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:If it works it still may not (Score:2)
Ah, but since making good code is so easy anyone can do it, experience doesn't matter. Just have your business pros write the software. Oh and tell me your company's name, so that I might invest in stock *cough*shorts*cough* and *cough*sell*cough* options.
Kjella
Re:If it works it still may not (Score:2)
It is called "Requirements Ellicitation".
Someone who is a professional at that bridges the gap, if you can't be bothered to bridge the gap, be prepared to fall into it.
What you propose would simply result in PHBs telling SW Devs how to code, and SW Devs telling PHBs their business rules are wrong.
Been there, done that;
PHB handing looking at his flow chart he had produced as requirements for a stored procedure, asking me "Why
Re:If it works it still may not (Score:4, Interesting)
That's simple, logical, and of no practical use. As part of my CIS degree, I was well over half way (close to three quarters) to a Business Management degree. It is absolutely useless for all of the business software I have to write.
My current project is to rewrite the entire county tax collection system. There is no business class that would have prepared me for that because each county collector does things differently.
I knew nothing about tax collection when I started this project, and the county collector knows nothing about software design (his belief that Fox Pro has exposed him to software development, and his need to micromanage notwithstanding).
He and I frequently meet to discuss the business rules his office currently uses, and the business rules he would like to be able to use. He tells me each feature he wants, and I create all the ends (front, middle, and back) to do it. Then we review the front ends and results from the backend.
This iterative process continues, on a feature by feature basis, until we are both satisfied that each feature works as it should and the user interface is streamlined for efficiency.
The bottom line is that detailed business understanding by the developers is both unnecessary and mostly useless. Software design knowledge by business people is also mostly useless (and in fact will likely be very detrimental) and unnecessary.
The common threads between business people and software developers to ensure success are good communication skill and patience. Without both of those, you may as well not even try.
Re:If it works it still may not (Score:2)
Revolutionary notion! (Score:3, Interesting)
What a revolutionary point of view/complaint this article gives! In the sense that "revolutionary" means that history goes through a loop and comes back to where it was before...
It is interesting to see though, how every so many years the same ideas pop up in new guises. Edger Dijkstra for instance said more or less the same thing about Software Engineering and its mantra of process phases and planned testing. And the same argument can (and has) been brought against Kent Beck's Extreme Programming methodology.
Oh well, just goes to show you: the only lesson ever learned from history is that nobody ever learns from history.
Money Rules it All (Score:3, Insightful)
Not sure I agree with all of the article (Score:5, Insightful)
The QA staff, on the other hand, rarely had engineers of a sufficient caliber that had the insights to search for and find the most insidious problems. Not only that, they (QA) occupied the no-man's land between business users and development, understanding neither area with any clarity.
This hurts (Score:3, Insightful)
We have to embrace test-centric development more. JUnit, CppUnit, PyUnit, they make it easy to write tests. But to convince the developers to write good tests, that is another matter. I often find it is harder to write a decent test for something complex than it is to implement the complex thing, but without that test, how do you know it works?
Re:This hurts (Score:2)
I'd rephrase that a bit.
"how can you demonstrate it works?" or "how can you demonstrate future changes will impact what you've done?"
Rethinking in those terms has helped me understand the fundamental need for documented testing practices, over and above 'knowing' something works. I've known things work, as have other people I've worked with. We *know* things work at that moment in time. What we lacked was the ability to demonstrate that things would wo
Re:Not sure I agree with all of the article (Score:2)
But you're right in one respect - QA engineers are -- or at least should be -- more than test monkeys.
Can't tell you how many times I worked with people, people on a "Senior" level, who knew very little about systems as a whole, or even the QA process - they just had been there long enough to know how to circumnavigate the idiosyncracies of the systems that were t
Re:Not sure I agree with all of the article (Score:2)
Re:Not sure I agree with all of the article (Score:2)
1. Testing/finding implementation bugs.
2. Ensuring the development and other software management processes work. This is where tools like statistical process control can provide a great deal of insight. Whether or not this is a function of Development or a specialized QA department makes little or no difference.
3. Ensuring that the result does what was intended (to your point, not necessarily what was desi
Proof it's a good thing for a company (Score:2)
Not a bad biz model. In the car example they eve build the cars on US soil with these methods, so, it is something we can do and doesn't break out backs.
Re:Proof it's a good thing for a company (Score:3, Informative)
And when they started out after WWII their industries were noted for exactly the opposite: mostly cheap stamped metal toys - the first. "Made in Japan" was a synonym for shoddy. (Not their fault particularly - it was the first profitable thing they could do with what was left of their infrastructure after the war.)
They em
Even more, QuAlity != QA (Score:4, Insightful)
If docs are porly written, and incomplete, how does one decide what's bug an what's feature?
If the docs depict the program's behavior, not define it, what can QA do?
And yes, if everythign is done right from the beginning, the QA people would have enough time to do something except testing.
Of course, only third of the two ways to write bugless programs works...
Re:Even more, QuAlity != QA (Score:2)
Testing DOES find bugs which the developers missed, but it only finds a very small fraction of them (unless you spend an extremely long time testing. I worked this out a couple years ago, but I forget the exact numbers. Something like to remove 90% of the remaining defects in our software, based on historical defect discovery, it would take around 20-30 person years of test effort.
Testing is the most expensive tool you have to remove defects. Whe
Oh god yes (Score:5, Insightful)
Bottom line: OSS could get way ahead of commercial software simply by doing proper QA and unit testing (not just the UNIX "it seems to work" test, the "are out of range inputs properly detected or does the program just choke and die") on par with what the best commercial developers have been doing. Just because you have to do all this paperwork and repetive checking when working for "The Man", doesn't mean it's an evil thing that should be thrown out. Sometimes the man actually has some good ideas, even if he spends most of his time shouting about how you didn't dot your i s on that last flowchart.
what is interesting (Score:5, Interesting)
Software devel. could learn from Blizzard. (Score:2, Interesting)
There are three variables for each project... (Score:2, Insightful)
For instance, you can have a project done fast and cheap but the quality will be lacking. Or you can have a project done correctly and quickly but it will cost you a fortune!
QA is part of that "having it done correctly" piece that most companies tend to cut out. Most companies can only grasp the Time and Cost factor and fail at the whole "Quality" component when doing pre-project analysis. I do not have enough fingers to count the projects I
Quality problems (Score:3, Interesting)
The quality of the product is not in focus. If you try talk about things like Lint and Purify with persons representing Quality you will get an answer that that isn't about quality at all...
So the whole Quality business is something that is invented to support itself and not the end customer of the product. In the long run the customer is actually more interested in the quality of the product than any provided documentation that states that this product was created with our Superior Methods and Ultimate Skill. That documentation doesn't help at all if the product crashes twice a day...
My experience with QA (Score:5, Interesting)
One of my main Day Jobs up to a few years ago was working in QA for Major Computer and Software Manufacturers.
The idea of:
Testing = finding bugs
QA = determining which features are required, and whether or not they work as intended for the end-user.
Is fine in theory, but rarely happens in practice. It usually ends up that QA is ignored and conflated into bug testing. And even then, it often doesn't matter.
Example: I was working on a team that developed an Important Piece of Software That Is Very Popular These Days. We Had No Specification.
None. After some terrifying meetings with the CEO, we somehow brought it to a 1.0 release. I didn't want to have to go through that little nightmare again, so at the 1.0 post mortem meeting, I asked "So, we built 1.0 without a spec - what exactly are we going to do next? What is the Specification for 2.0?"
The lead programmer looked right at me and said "The Spec for 2.0 is 1.0."
We had shipped 1.0 with over 850 bugs, with half a dozen known (if somewhat obscure) crashing bugs, and with several features "turned off" because we couldn't get them to work.
At that point I knew I had to get the fuck out of there. I wasn't going to spend over 2 hours a day driving just to help this rolling train wreck. I left as we shipped 2.0.
From there I went to a company That Was Also Extremely Famous (but now defunct) where QA was more of an expensive after thought. they hired a great team, but the engineers were so disjointed that the product kept changing every other month.
The stress level was so high at that company, of the 120 employees, half a dozen attempted suicide in the 9 months I worked there. At one point, there was such a row in basic engineering philosophy, two of the main programmers got into a fist fight. When the money dried up, we all got laid off.
We can go on and on about how important QA is, but the fact is, we're in a business that makes products, and when the business is more than a dozen people jammed in a garage or airless office space, the products tend to be driven by marketing droids. Left to their own devices, Engineers will produce complex objects that don't necessarily work or fulfil a worthwhile function, or do it in a way that is elegant and useful. Left to QA, the product never gets out the door, because Software Engineering *ISN'T*. SE is more like knitting or quilt making than an Engineered Science. Bridge Builders use Engineers - they have books full of equations that have been proven over the years and they use these solid tested things in a creative way to solve a problem : how to get from here to there.
When a bridge fails, or a building collapses, they just look at the evidence and compare it to the known working materials sciences, engineering principles, etc. and figure out how it failed.
With Software everything is written in a series of codes - at the machine level, we know what they do. But once you get into the meat and potatoes of software development, it all gets very wiggly very quickly. That's why TESTING is needed. And QA should be brought in even before the coding begins - when the UI is being developed, when the notion of the application's purpose and methods are being developed.
But, as noted above: if QA runs the show: it never ships, as there are always improvements to be made. Always.
So, you have the maketing droids who have the ear of the business managers who then set arbitrary and insane deadlines. The result? QA can't touch everything, or they conspire with Engineering that some sections are "good enough" and they let it go, so they can focus resources on testing problem areas, in order to meet the absurd deadline.
The end result is always the same: The public gets buggy software.
The only question is : How Buggy Is It?
They flip the crank, they do the late nights, they get the product out. QA and Eng do their littl
Then you're doing QA wrong. (Score:3, Insightful)
Then you're doing QA wrong.
One of the big parts of having a spec and a QA process is to know WHEN TO STOP.
When you get the function of a part right, and the tests have been run and show it's right, you MOVE ON. You only come back to it if the debugging of a later part reveals a hidden bug that the earlier tests missed (or couldn't test without the availability of the later part).
When you've moved on from the last
Re:"Buisness" as usual (Score:4, Insightful)
What you have described is a large bug-hunting exercise.
QA is a process by which errors are supposed to be PREVENTED, not FOUND OUT.
That's why QA != Testing
Better QA == fewer bugs to find (it assures you are building quality)
Better Testing == more bugs found (it is, in fact, closer quality verification)
Re:"Buisness" as usual (Score:2)
From what I've seen of QA, it is testing, just not in the "Testing" phase. It is having well-defined objects, interfaces, input ranges, output ranges, unit tests and so on to make sure t
Re:"Buisness" as usual (Score:5, Insightful)
No offense, but you missed out:
Ensuring that the requirements the SW is built to match are complete / correct in the first place.
Ensuring that the SW is built in a way that is suitably efficient for the project.
Ensuring that the SW has at least been thought about in terms of being built for re-use.
Ensuring that there was at least some thought about "is there something already here that we could re-use or modify?"
Ensuring that the SW is built in a method that lends itself to maintenance and modification without tearing out of hair.
Ensuring that some form of profiling or metrication has been performed, in case the project as a whole needs optimisation (being able to look at the metrics for each unit speeds that first "where to optimise" pass SOOOO much)
Ensuring that throughout all those processes the correct feedback was fedback to the people who actually DID all those things you just ensured...
ALL of that is part of the QA for software development, very little of it actually involves testing the software does its job right...
Re:"Buisness" as usual (Score:2)
Re:"Buisness" as usual (Score:4, Insightful)
Mmmkay.
"QA spends a day to code a test suite which exercises every code path"
erm... "QA spends a day"
Yeah, right.
You do realise that a FULL code path test suite will, perforce, be LARGER than the source code it tests?
When doing QA, I used to start writing the test cases for software when the REQUIREMENTS document arrived, so that they were ready for use during the tail end of coding and for the unit testing. Its a BIG job.
And you design tests from the reqs, not from the code - how will you trap a completely missing boundary case, if you build tests from the source? Or the design?
Requirements drive source and test design, separately so that the assumptions in the former cannot pollute the latter.
Re:"Buisness" as usual (Score:2)
Re:Testing - The Anti Quality Process (Score:2)
Good thing he's not a cobbler, or you'd be barefoot.
Garg
Re:Testing - The Anti Quality Process (Score:2)
Re:Testing - The Anti Quality Process (Score:3, Interesting)
But, you're right, his site is pretty deplorable.
Re:Testing - The Anti Quality Process (Score:2)
But the old saw I alluded to - "the cobbler's son has no shoes" - points out our tendency to focus in on something so much we ignore the obvious. Heck, I've done it... most of us have. But first impressions are important. ("I wouldn't go to that cobbler, his kids have no shoes." ) Something you might want to point out to him.
So now I will overcome my bias, fire up IE and see what he has to say...
Garg
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Testing - The Anti Quality Process (Score:2)
Where to add QA to linux (Score:2, Interesting)
1) The first is really just a patch, but to QA the current code base and the new incoming code.
2) To add QA to the process of generating the code so that it is controlled enough the output is garunteded.
This would take quite a long time to get in place but in the end it would produce a much better and cleaner code base. This also would give ti respect from more professional organizations.
Re:QA (Score:2)
Counterexamples: Debian has a community-driven QA system [slashdot.org] and takes care that its (long awaited) releases are bug-free. The same can't be said about OSs from Microsoft (what are Service packs made of?) or even Apple (users of OSX prior to 10.2 should remember about that
Re:QA (Score:3, Insightful)
businesses chose to use windows because they wouldn't have to rewrite all their legacy/mainframe/in-house apps, because underneath it all, you still had DOS. and if your app didn't play nice with windows task-switching of DOS apps, you could exit wondows entirely, and have essentially a clean slate for the custom app to use.
Re:Quality != Good (Score:3, Informative)
A specific example; the standard requires that you have a process in place to ensure that the copies of company documentation in use are up to date and valid.
The fact that someone at your company wrote in their company standard for that requirement that they would do this by only having one copy (and weren't intelligent enough to make that an ELECTRONIC shared copy) is very far from being a problem of the standard.
The company could just as easily
Re:Quality != Good (Score:3, Informative)
I think there is a requirement that you review your processes regularly; but having a meeting where the PHB says "we have good processes? Right?" and every drone nods dutifully is fine for that requirement.
ISO9001 is designed to assure outside entities (customers, investors) that you have taken steps to do things in a way that mitigates agai
Re:Quality is coordination. (Score:3, Insightful)
Try 15. (In software and in manufacturing)
The most severe downfalls I've seen are when the marketing teams and development teams do not adequately communicate with the QA team.
I have to disagree, the most severe downfalls I've seen are when the ship to customer date isn't allowed to slip but the date for development submitting to test is. Test end up having to do a m
Re:As an ASP/SQL developer, how can I QA better? (Score:3, Insightful)
The tools you are looking for exist, but they're not cheap and they need someone to create test cases for them and run them. I assume it's a web app you're talking about? Really, you need to hire a professional and give the
Stress-testing tool throws java exceptions (Score:3, Interesting)
Basically, anywhere within a java program where an exception could legally be thrown, the tool would cause your program to throw one of the allowed exceptions.
Sure, java has checked exceptions, and you