Right then, here we are doing User Acceptance Testing. What tends to happen is that users find various issues, some of which are functional faults that have to be solved, some others to do with User friendliness and some which are ‘cosmetic issues’; those cosmetic issues, when piled up together can have a serious effect on the usefulness of the application. Some issues are actually ‘works as designed’, but it’s clear that there will need to be a change if the users are to successfully use the app.
So findings are noted, and as Test Manager I try to ensure we’ve separated issues from possible change requests and categorise everything correctly. Even so, whether something is a ‘request for change’ or a ‘bug’ always leads to discussions where smartypants ICT project manager/dev team leader maintains a position that it’s a ‘RFC’ and acceptant, who has the pot of money to pay for all this maintains ‘it’s a bug’. Some of these discussions actually cost more than just solving the issue. User notices that the sentence in a message box could be slightly more clear and asks for a change; about two minutes work for the dev team. But no, dev team would rather have a long, unfriendly e-mail discussion about the ‘point of principle’ that this is and RFC, and as such should not have been entered in the bug system!
I understand that when an external software builder is building to contract he wants to limit extra work, but in this case it's an internal dev club. Anyway, I see all this and think to myself ‘isn’t this all a bit sad?’ What’s the chance that said dev team leader would actually bother with this kind of discussion if he had a healthy sex life? Isn’t all this tosh just evidence of the lack of social skills and empathy that makes so many ICT people unable to comprehend what a user actually wants?
Oh well, shall send an invoice for telling my tester not to bother discussing the merits of a minor adjustment to a sentence.
So findings are noted, and as Test Manager I try to ensure we’ve separated issues from possible change requests and categorise everything correctly. Even so, whether something is a ‘request for change’ or a ‘bug’ always leads to discussions where smartypants ICT project manager/dev team leader maintains a position that it’s a ‘RFC’ and acceptant, who has the pot of money to pay for all this maintains ‘it’s a bug’. Some of these discussions actually cost more than just solving the issue. User notices that the sentence in a message box could be slightly more clear and asks for a change; about two minutes work for the dev team. But no, dev team would rather have a long, unfriendly e-mail discussion about the ‘point of principle’ that this is and RFC, and as such should not have been entered in the bug system!
I understand that when an external software builder is building to contract he wants to limit extra work, but in this case it's an internal dev club. Anyway, I see all this and think to myself ‘isn’t this all a bit sad?’ What’s the chance that said dev team leader would actually bother with this kind of discussion if he had a healthy sex life? Isn’t all this tosh just evidence of the lack of social skills and empathy that makes so many ICT people unable to comprehend what a user actually wants?
Oh well, shall send an invoice for telling my tester not to bother discussing the merits of a minor adjustment to a sentence.
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