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Software development is in the Doldrums

"Don't get off the boat." "Seriously, never get off the boat," The instructor said, leaning forward and looking at each of us in turn. "But surely if it's sinking..." We reply, somewhat confused and slightly incredulous. We've seen Titanic, we think to ourselves, we know how this sea survival stuff works... "OK" He concedes, If things get really bad, "Get on the life raft if you can step- up from the boat to the life raft". "But, But... the yacht is like 37ft long, Do we want to wait until that whole boat is lower than the life-raft? When less than 1ft of the yacht is above the surface? Meanwhile all the time the life raft is just there... floating happily alongside." "Pretty much, yes," he said nodding. The movie Apocalypse Now speaks the truth. That was about 15 years ago. Not much has changed since. The reasons are manifold. Firstly, the yacht is a decent shelter. The thin plastic

Build, Test, Ship, Learn, Rinse & repeat.

Ever feel like your team is in a deadlock? The product owner wants Gizmo+ to be shipped, your senior engineers are split between grokking Gizmo+ and fixing Widget++ . Meanwhile the SDETs are franticly updating automated checks/BDD scripts and exploratory testers are uncovering that Widget+ and Gizmo+ should have been named ...+10 given the number of surprise bonus features they are finding. As a consequence feature delivery can start to slow and quality is inevitably hit as difficult decisions are made on what to fix. The typical reactions to such a situation can depend on your project's context, but to highlight a few common ones: Ramp up team size. Push back on deadlines. Push back on new features. Delay releases until 'it all gets sorted' ... I don't have to break it to you that these options are 'far from optimal'. In summary they all revolve around costing more and delivering less (from my time as a programme manager I can tell you - thats wha

Simple test automation, with no moving parts.

Can you see the 74? This is an Ishihara Color Test. Its used to help diagnose colour blindness, people with certain forms of colour blindness would not be able to read the text contained in the image. The full set of 38 plates would allow a doctor to accurately diagnose the colour-perception deficiencies affecting a patient. The test is ingenious in its concept, yet remarkably simple in its execution. No complicated lenses, lighting, tools or measuring devices are required. The doctor or nurse can quickly administer the test with a simple and portable pack of cards. The Ishihara test is an end to end test. Anything, from lighting in the room, to the brain of the patient can influence the result. The examiner will endeavour minimise many of the controllable factors, such as switching off the disco lights, asking the patient to remove their blue tinted sun-glasses and maybe checking they can read normal cards (e.g. your patient might be a child.). End to end tests like this are messy

The Mythical Standard Build

Do your hear phrases like "All our users use [insert some technology]" spoken in your office? or possibly "We have a 'corporate standard' desktop". I have a lot. I have since my first job, back in the '90s. It's a commonly held belief in most of the client companies I've worked with. Programmers, testers, project managers and product owners frequently hold faith in the standard build. It -is- a matter of faith. Often based on little more than wishful thinking or at best very loose 'standards'. The problem isn't purely one of client machines or end-users. I've often seen servers defined as 'clones' that in fact have quite different properties. e.g. different versions of java or application servers or even different time. The blind faith on these standard systems has caught myself and colleagues out so many times that I now find myself instantly questioning the assumption, and encouraging others to do the same. Even in thi