FreeLists / webproducers / [webproducers] Re: persuading a project manager that formal testing is important???

[Michael James Pinto <michaeljamespinto@xxxxxxxxx>]

--- Duane Douglas <email.lists@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> i've worked on a number of small commercial software projects where
> the project managers treated testing as an afterthought.  does anyone
> know of a persuasive way to convince a project manager that formal 
> testing is important?

Radical Counterpoint: If it's commercial software the first release
will be expected to have bugs. In addition since you don't yet know
your user base it may be hard to measure which features are important,
and which ones may be dropped. Also if it's a first release chances are
most people aren't even paying for the damn thing so their expectations
are rather low - or the product is underpriced to get a foot in the
door - or it's just another "me too" product designed to catch a wave
(which may or may not last). Commercial software is a different game
than custom software which may be mission critical - it's not like an
airplane is going to fall out of the sky or traffic lights will stop
working. Keep in mind the famous Microsoft slogan "Quality is Job 2.0".
In fact trying to "get it right" may cause the product to be late and
screw up marketing. Besides thanks to the web it's traditional for most
1.0 products to be full of bugs and crash the machine (otherwise the
product "just isn't cool").

Of course maybe if you wrote a spec before you started writing your
code there might be something to test in the first place! Hard to fight
that one...


Michael

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