"If you don't like something new that's getting a lot of attention, you call it out as being all hype propelled by fanboys enamoured by an immature solution.

If you like that something new, you say it has momentum that's being accelerated by passionate advocates of a fresh approach."

via Loud Thinking, picture James Duncan Davidson.

Cem Kaner on quality assurance:

"When I was hired at WordStar, back in 1983 (when WordStar was the top producer of word processing software in the world), the test group was called Quality Assurance. The company was attached to the label QA for testers, but as Testing Technology Team Leader, I was able to convince them to change the name, from Quality Assurance to Quality Assistance.

Quality Assistance--that's what testers do. We help. We investigate. We learn things. We report them clearly. We make sure that people understand what we have found and what its significance means. We provide the good data that is so important for understanding and improving the quality of the product. That's important, but it's not "quality assurance."" from The Ongoing Revolution in Software Testing.

Kaner has a valid point with his argument. Somebody can only assure quality if this person has the necessary powers. However most tester will not be able to stop a release if the quality goal has not been met. Furthermore the word assistance lowers the tension between the developers and the QA group. Assisting somebody is about offering help and guidance which is completely different than what assurance stands for.

"Methodologies are like cookbooks: follow their recipes and a successful system will result. Some methodologies are modest in scope and depth, while others contain literally thousands of pieces of work, or tasks, tied together into templates. Each template is appropriate for a specific type of development project" (from Agile Software Development with Scrum)

As the quote suggests processes are like recipes (XP, Scrum, RUP, V-Model, Water****,...) but if you want to apply them successfully you need to know more. You need to know when and how to tweak the recipes. You need to know which ingredients are the most important ones and how they work together. You need to know which tools are crucial, how they work and when to use them.

It's about time that more people start to look behind the recipes...

you once said that it is your dream to make the world a better place... is it beauty you are looking for?

no, not for beauty. we have to replace beauty, which is a cultural concept, with goodness, which is a humanist concept.

the beauty of intelligence?

yes. of intelligence. the elegance of intelligence and the beauty of happiness.

Read the whole interview over at designboom

My final thesis for my first University degree was about automated software testing and how it can be implemented at a company. While doing my literature review I stumbled across this beautiful Zen-like explanation why software will always contain bugs.

Thus spake the master: "Any program, no matter how small, contains bugs."

The novice did not believe the master's words. "What if the program were so small that it performed a single function?" he asked.

"Such a program would have no meaning," said the master, "but if such a one existed, the operating system would fail eventually, producing a bug."

But the novice was not satisfied. "What if the operating system did not fail?" he asked.

"There is no operating system that does not fail," said the master, "but if such a one existed, the hardware would fail eventually, producing a bug."

The novice was still not satisfied. "What if the hardware did not fail?" he asked.

The master gave a great sigh. "There is no hardware that does not fail," he said, "but if such a one existed, the user would want the program to do something different, and this too is a bug."

A program without bugs would be an absurdity, a nonesuch. If there were a program without any bugs then the world would cease to exist.

- Geoffrey James, The Zen of Programming