>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. There are ways to find out about that (contextual inquiry, market research), which means you will save money by developing less useless features. This is why user testing saves money. >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 I would argue against that these days - the same way people expect *all* movies to have Hollywood-like production values, they expect their software not to crash or be really buggy. And: do you want your brand burned? That nice brand you invested so much in? >In fact trying to "get it right" may cause the product to be late and >screw up marketing. I guess this is a classic argument against testing. But testing and user research techniques will keep your development time and cost *down*. Strange, isn't it? Every experienced developer will tell you this. PeterV __________________________________________________________________________ To unsubscribe send a blank message with unsubscribe in the subject to webproducers-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx To access our webform (instead of sending e-mail) for popular commands including subscribe, unsubscribe, digest, and vacation visit www.WebProducers.org. You can also access the list archive at the website. Questions and comments are welcome just e-mail me, morry@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx