Software Testing

Software testing is a crucial step in the development of any application. Unfortunately, time is not often on the side of the software testing squad. Fighting inflexible time frames and ship dates that have been set in stone by forces outside the development team, the software testers slog on to the deadline, with the honorable goal of finding and documenting every bug. I've been on a good number of outside software testing teams over the years ... and it always seems to go the same way.

No matter the program, the beta testers find something that they feel needs to get fixed before the disc goes gold. Alas, there's never time to fix all the bugs, and the program gets shipped, warts and all. In a triage scenario, veteran software testers know that it's inevitable that something has to slip through. They just hope that the most heinous nasties are squashed before the final release candidate.

Once the program ships, it doesn't take long for the user base to find the bugs. The unwitting and most vocal can tend to blame the Quality Assurance team and the beta software testing effort. "Why didn't you find and fix this?" they ask, without having the insight to consider the forces that come to bear.

When it's gotta ship, it's gotta ship. Ready-or-not, here it goes ...

By the time the shrink wrap hits the street, those last minute bugs may actually be fixed ... but the fixes won't be on the CD that shipped in the first boxes. They may be slipstreamed into subsequent releases, with patches made available over the Internet.

As a user (and a grizzled software tester), I've learned not to immediately jump on and install a release the day it comes out, when possible. I usually wait for the first round of fixes to ship before I roll the dice ...