[MUD-Dev] Quality Testing

[John Buehler]

Michael Tresca writes:
> John Buehler posted  on Monday, October 15, 2001 12:25 AM
>> Dave Rickey writes:

>>> Our QA process was pure blasphemy: Everyone was expected to
>>> track and fix their own bugs.

>> I find it remarkably scary that this is considered blasphemy,
>> even said tongue in cheek as I assume it is.  I started my career
>> at DEC, and while there, we had very strict responsibilities.  As
>> a developer, you were responsible for coding and testing your
>> area of functionality to make sure that it worked.  You knew the
>> boundary conditions, you knew the mainstream scenarios, you knew
>> the performance expectations/requirements, etc.  When I moved to
>> Microsoft, I was aghast at the casual attitude of many engineers
>> about writing code shoddily and then assuming that testing would
>> pick up the bugs.  It's the kind of thing that makes you fall out
>> of your chair.

> Hmmm, I ran in testing circles and have a few years of experience
> under my belt as both project manager of web design and the
> corporate culture.

> Dave's right -- it is blasphemy.  It's a very dangerous way to go.
> Because this system generally assumes that every programmer is a
> mature, responsible adult who will do everything he or she can to
> ensure a fully functioning product.  Dave's team was obviously
> solid, capable, and unilaterally motivated to make the game a
> success.

Well, we could slug this out for a long time.  I consider QA
organizations as necessary patches to ensure that the current,
primitive software development methodologies that we use produce
some kind of useable software.  I'm a staunch fan of component
development methodologies, strict contractual understanding,
incremental development, etc.  Those are the things that move
quality assurance into the development methodology itself, obviating
the need for a separate quality assurance organization and process.

This is said without any intended offense to anyone in quality
assurance.  Some of the people that I most liked at Microsoft were
the testing folks.

JB

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