Going Agile For The Wrong Reasons (April 2010)

Do You NEED to Go Agile?

As one of the original signers of the Manifesto for Agile Development, you'd think that Scott Barber would advise anyone who would listen to make the move to agile - but you'd be wrong. We recently interviewed Scott as part of our Testing the Limits series, where we questioned him on that much-referenced document, in addition to other topics near and dear to today's software leaders. Below are a few excerpts from our 3-part Q&A: Is 'going agile' a mistake? - From Part I "I believe that the trend to 'go Agile' is misguided. If a company is developing good software, the people involved in developing that software are happy working there, the software development is sustainable, and the business is being adequately served by that software, there's really no need for them to try to be more or less Agile. Agile has challenges like any other culture, but the single biggest challenge I find is companies trying to solve development, process, management, and/or schedule problems by 'going Agile.' Dr. House: Expert Tester - From Part II "The television series House, M.D. is absolutely the best example of testing I've seen on a TV or movie screen. This is a show about diagnostic medicine, not software, but these people know testing. They understand the difference between positive and negative testing. They use scripted and exploratory testing. They aren't satisfied with minimizing symptoms, they have an inner need to determine and eliminate root causes of unacceptable symptoms or behaviors." Who needs testers? - From Part III "10 years ago, I heard a lot of managers and executives saying 'What do you need testers for? If you'd just develop it right in the first place, they'd have nothing to find.' I don't hear that very often anymore. Today, executives understand that is an unreasonable sentiment. Unfortunately, they now seem to think that testing can prove and/or control quality."

iPad Testing? Yes We Can

The iPad launched just a few weeks ago, but uTest is already getting calls from companies about conducting functional, usability and load testing for this year's hottest device. Luckily, we saw this one coming and a number of our top US testers purchased the new gadget as soon as it was available. So we're ready to test your apps on the iPad. Top media, gaming and retail companies are racing to get their iPad apps to market - or to make sure their existing web and mobile apps work on the iPad (there have been a lot of user complaints about GUI and other rendering or functional issues), so if you need help testing your native iPhone apps, web apps, or even your new iPad applications, get in touch with us for a price quote.

Quality Quotes

"The best way to get a project done faster is to start sooner." - Jim Highsmith "Programming can be fun, so can cryptography; however they should not be combined." - Kreitzberg and Shneiderman "Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler." - Albert Einstein (Thanks to The NUS School of Computing for the quotes.)

Top 10 Technology Mistakes

Technology leaders shouldn't be so hard on themselves. Unless, of course, they were mentioned in PC Authority's top 10 list of technological blunders. If you're a fan of other people's failures (perfectly normal, by the way), then you will surely appreciate their references to:

  • Sony rootkit
  • Intel Pentium floating point
  • IBM PS/2

See who else made the list.

Free Whitepaper: Mobile Application Testing

Traditional methods fall short when it comes to testing the latest iPhone, Android and Blackberry applications. So what can mobile developers do about it? The answer can be found in crowdsourced mobile app testing. In this whitepaper, we explain the basics of crowdsourced mobile testing, while outlining drawbacks of traditional testing methods, such as:

  • In-house teams
  • Offshoring
  • Emulators
  • Unskilled beta testing

Download this free whitepaper to discover how crowdsourced testing can help you launch higher quality mobile apps and get to market faster.

Bug of the Month

Jailbreaking Software: "A new law allowed the CDCR to release 6,600 low-risk inmates on unsupervised, non-revocable parole", but because of a problem with its software program, inmates were released without supervision who are potentially violent. Now, tracking down those inmates has proved to be a problem."

Android and Firefox: Together at Last!

Exciting news from the mobile front yesterday, as developer Vladimir Vukicevic announced that a more usable 'pre-alpha' build of Firefox for Android (aka Fennec) has been made its debut to an eager beta crowd. As expected, there are a number of bugs and usability issues that need to be worked out, but overall, this a very promising development (no pun intended). We discuss this story and others on www.mobileapptesting.com - a site recently launched by uTest that features user-generated content, contests, product reviews and more from the rapidly expanding mobile universe.