There are lots of places, not excluding my resume.
AJ Ayer stated (as I have mentioned before, yes I know) that if something cannot be proven true or false, it is “nonsensical”. They also say you cannot prove a negative, but they neglect to realize that their statement is that very thing. Ayer did the same. I have not pointed that out yet, but his assertion is by his own definition, nonsense.
What a construct we live in. I guess we have to make order of things and have language and abstractions and whatnot to get along, but some things, like software QA and/or testing is a construct that is not visceral. It is whatever you accept it as.
But still, I see so many test cases and scenarios that cannot have a true or false assigned to them. They get more of a “yeah, that’s pretty much what I think it is supposed to do.”
Agilists would have you believe that testing is dynamic and built into the process of TDD. Sure, it is, partially.
But the System on day 10 is not the System on day 100.
And you don’t know what it is going to look like when it is delivered. So, what can be tested? Only what exists. What exists? What is built. What is built? Either specs or code.
Or expectations.
Beware the vendor that tells you that they can deliver even a moderately sized solution before talking about touchpoints, data migration, business needs, buys you lunch and does it because it gets them time to understand what you need instead of because it gets a steak in your mouth. That steak will be gone and that salesperson will be at another table with another potential Client before you even digest the fillet.
Ask: “How do you know?”
Schedule payments with milestones that correspond to Value. This seems obvious, but it isn’t. Pay for what has worth, not for some arbitrary deadline being reached (time keeps on slippin, slippin…, as the song goes) – for the vendor they just have to worry about not losing you. They dont have to worry about doing a good job. And trust me, many large successful companies are better at stringing Clients along than they are at doing what they say they do for a living.
Thanks,
Josh