Quality has new meaning – it is shit

I do not find that title implied to me; but see it almost everyday being implied to others.

This is in a continuation to a post a while back. In that post, I talked about a project team and their view point on quality. Here is an addition to the same set of people. The conversation goes like

Project Manager: I was just checking on the defect count and noticed we have 24 open P1 and P2 in system. How are we are going to go live tomorrow. What just happened?

QA Manager 1: Nothing, it is just that my team currently does not have any work for Release 2. They had some time on their hands and hence pro-actively they started to test in R1 and logged these defects.

Project Manager 1: so what are you going to do?

QA Manager 1: Nothing, these are not R1 defects. Testing is closed. We wrapped that last week and all these have tobe logged in R2. These are not R1 defects.

Everyone else in the room which included Analyst, and Project Managers laughed about it and joked that this is funny and defects have to go away.

This was the last point of discussion in the meeting and I was shell shocked to say anything. Not that it would have mattered to these guys. I am responsible for the delivery of a different project and not the modules they were talking about. So, amongst all politics and shock I did not say anything. But, I was thinking what happened to quality here.

One of them was the QA Manager, who is responsible for quality of the project and she said “Testing is closed”. How would we feel if Toyota or Honda or any car manufacturer would say that decide to fix problems in the next batch or version of the car.

And what amuses me is that these discussions reach people who are Director IT and Vice President IT and they are in agreement of the fact that “Testing is closed”

 

Google may launch an iTunes rival

Reports are swirling around the Internet that Google is in the advanced stages of testing a music service that could one day rival Apple iTunes. The reports come amid ongoing online murmurings that Google is working away on a social networking platform behind closed doors.

Read the full story here.

Dare to Share – A New Culture of Collaboration in the Enterprise

The web and ever-transforming digital technology have revolutionized the concept of communication and collaboration at work. Fundamental to employee collaboration is how individuals join together to achieve a mutual goal. Collaboration is based on the idea that sharing knowledge through cooperation helps solve problems more efficiently. In the enterprise, this principle couldn’t be more true, especially as more and more employees are engaging with one another through asynchronous, socially-geared technology.

Read more at: http://blog.socialcast.com/e2sday-dare-to-share-a-new-culture-of-collaboration-in-the-enterprise/

Cairngorm 3

I chanced upon this yesterday (http://sourceforge.net/adobe/cairngorm/home/) and was impressed with what they are trying to do. Building upon Parsley looking to do a lot of injection and also support modules that they have been criticized for in the past.

Looks like Adobe Cairngorm team finally got it right.

Noah: Development Environment

Some time back I posted about various development tools that I would like to have in my

Development Environment ~ Eclipse

development environment. Well back then, I was unable to get that list in place; but here I have started doing it for Noah. To kick it off, I have attached the tools that I am going to use in the development environment. This is not an exhaustive list, and I may add more things to it as I go about development.

The document detailing the Development Environment can be located here: TS_Development_Environment

Pet Project is christned: Noah

Well – I though a lot about it, and came up with the name Noah for two reasons primarily:

1. I like the name
2. Noah did something very useful – built an ARK that saved the world

What I intent out of this project is not to save the world, but to build a sandbox that can be used by myself and any other developer to try out bigger things like Performance, Analysis, Design, Testing, POCs on new technologies.

Hence, I feel the name is appropriate – This project will provide others an opportunity to do something big.

 

Pet Project

It has been almost 3 years, when I first had this idea – a pet project. And, I needed one so that I can try out various things in technology like – try new UI frameworks like Flex, GWT, DOJO etc. Also, there have been times when I have wanted to try out new ideas like how to improve an application I never had a substantial test bed to try out those and generate results.

I have been running around many things, but I have realized that this time has now come for me to start something; something that I can be proud of. I am no Bill Gates or Einstein and I need to pick up things that I can do for the community. I have all those ideas where I want to do something.

So I start here, I start now a pet project. I have the following ideas:

 

Accounting Solution
- I need something similar to Tally – but that already exists
+ Looks simple one to make
- You need to use it – you can find a bigger use of it
- If you ever want to use it else where it wont be possible
- Can be built as a part of application #2 and #3

Broker Management
- Need specialized details
+ Dad can help
- Is going to be a long running project
- Will need a lot of time and attention on my own time
+ It is a complex system and will present challenges to work on

Clinical Management
- Need Specialized details – WIll have to Work with Atul
+ Is of medium complexity
- Will need a lot of attention on my own time
- There is a commercial viability, just in case

 

And the decision is Accounting Software – why?

1. It is simple to get started with; so that I can actually work on all layers. I do not want to pick something so big that is never ending

2. Other applications will need accounting in them, so I am actually building all three together

3. It provides me with an opportunity to build a API/Framework that can be used in other applications. This is going to be tricky and challenging

 

Well, to make it clear, this is not something that I am doing for my organization or during any duration when I am working. This is a pet project that I am going to work on in my free time and it is going to take time. I am thinking that I should share the development with you all – artifacts etc.

So be it – I will share how this is going and will be sharing all artifacts with the world.

With me luck.

Mobile Web – In a different way

This presentation talks about how mobile web should be thought about and does talks about some numbers too. I like three things about the presentation:

 

1. The creativity with whcih it has been built and;

2. Talks about the core of the problem and;

3. Touches upon how we can go about fixing it.

Eclipse takes a leap with Marketplace

This is something not new to world, but is to me. Last night, when I started to upgrade my development environment to use Eclipse Helios, the very first thing I needed was a plugin to get met maven based projects working – m2clispe. Like in the past I started to search the net for a URL that I can dump the “Install Software” screen and navigate through the various options and then find any missing dependencies to get that going.

But, I was in for a surprise – Eclipse Marketplace. I read about Eclipse launching a marketplace a while back, but because I was not actively developing back then, it did not register. However, a tutorial reminded me the Marketplace.

The experience from there on was simply wonderful, something that I am not familiar in the Java world of development. Kudos to the Eclipse team to get this one going.

Nest step if to install many more plugins in my new Helios before I get back to development.

 

The Architect’s Eye – Communicating Errors

In many of my projects, I have found architects guilty of preparing a design that leaves the error messages out of the question. And now, I come across an article that shows us 35 creative designs of showing a 404 page (http://www.onextrapixel.com/2011/03/09/the-secret-of-a-successful-error-page-with-35-amazing-404-page-designs/). As I was browsing some of these designs, I recall a designer I worked with – Beth. I learnt so much from her about design and especially Information Architecture. I have always found her looking at things differently be it work or a status update she did.

Coming back to error messages, in most applications I have noticed that error messages are cryptic like “An error has occurred, please check again and get back to System Administrator”. The user is needed to log a report with the call center and report what they were doing. Many a times a user would just ignore to do all that because it takes their time to do such stuff and they say we will come back and try another time – of course if it is not urgent. I see two issues here:

1. A user has been asked to do something that an application designer – An Architect could have done by designing the system right

2. The Application team has lost an opportunity of knowing where their application failed because a user chooses not to report it. They lost an opportunity to fix something pro-actively.