Due to illness and travel and the desire to put more attention into this, I'm not ready to continue the series of posts on antipatterns at the moment.
Twitter (140 characters?) and my available hardware didn't allow posting at the time, plus I was paying attention and not multi-tasking so here's my discussion two days after the fact.
It was satisfying to skewer Julian Harty in the auditorium this morning, though, if a little bit scary (... do people really believe what he's talking about?).
Harty's theme was "The Death of Testing." To be fair, I think the title and theme may have been influenced by simple business considerations of the PNSQC conference at which this took place, and they're trying to attract people who do software quality professionally to the PNSQC conference by scaring them into fearing for their jobs. If so, it worked, and attendance was high.
I want to give due to Harty's presentation skills; he's very good at engaging the audience.
The main thesis of his talk seemed sincere. He was talking about Google practices, and honestly qualified his comments by pointing out that he left Google in June of last year. (hmm, wonder how that happened...)
The idea is that "testing" in the broad sense of measuring and monitoring the overall quality of the product can be outsourced for free. Google does this with the "Give us feedback" functionality on their sites. The idea is that each of the many, many end-users of Google's products have the opportunity to tell somebody on the appropriate internal that there's some problem, and communicate with some individual at Google about the process of fixing it.
This works rarely, but often enough given that there are so many Google users.
Harty's thesis: this is free for Google, the quality is better because there are more eyeballs, and Google appears to respect customers and strengthen loyalty. Google has successfully outsourced quality.
... Yeah? Copious steaming bovine excrement.
If I find a good bug this way, and go through the Google-prescribed process of getting it fixed, I could receive a cash prize of a few grand (according to Harty).
Now, suppose this is a security flaw. (There will always, always be security flaws, known or unknown.) Suppose this involves personally identifiable information (PII) i.e. most of Google functionality. Suppose I'm the first to find and characterize it. Suppose it's exploitable, e.g. I can use it to see the PII of anybody I want. Suppose I'm not the most ethical person...
I have a choice: do I report it to Google as they would like me to do, and chance getting a few grand as a reward? Or, do I report it to blackhats, and try to get $ a few million?
Of course I'd go to the blackhats! When I do this, all users of Google are exposed to the risk of identity theft. Identity theft is the worst thing that can happen to you on the internet.
Meanwhile, Google thinks that it has successfully outsourced product quality! Great deal, huh? The stockholders love it. Conference speakers talking about latest trends LOVE it. But the end result is identify theft for large numbers of Google customers.
Outsourcing quality can't possibly work for a company in the long run.
Testing is not dead.
Twitter (140 characters?) and my available hardware didn't allow posting at the time, plus I was paying attention and not multi-tasking so here's my discussion two days after the fact.
It was satisfying to skewer Julian Harty in the auditorium this morning, though, if a little bit scary (... do people really believe what he's talking about?).
Harty's theme was "The Death of Testing." To be fair, I think the title and theme may have been influenced by simple business considerations of the PNSQC conference at which this took place, and they're trying to attract people who do software quality professionally to the PNSQC conference by scaring them into fearing for their jobs. If so, it worked, and attendance was high.
I want to give due to Harty's presentation skills; he's very good at engaging the audience.
The main thesis of his talk seemed sincere. He was talking about Google practices, and honestly qualified his comments by pointing out that he left Google in June of last year. (hmm, wonder how that happened...)
The idea is that "testing" in the broad sense of measuring and monitoring the overall quality of the product can be outsourced for free. Google does this with the "Give us feedback" functionality on their sites. The idea is that each of the many, many end-users of Google's products have the opportunity to tell somebody on the appropriate internal that there's some problem, and communicate with some individual at Google about the process of fixing it.
This works rarely, but often enough given that there are so many Google users.
Harty's thesis: this is free for Google, the quality is better because there are more eyeballs, and Google appears to respect customers and strengthen loyalty. Google has successfully outsourced quality.
... Yeah? Copious steaming bovine excrement.
If I find a good bug this way, and go through the Google-prescribed process of getting it fixed, I could receive a cash prize of a few grand (according to Harty).
Now, suppose this is a security flaw. (There will always, always be security flaws, known or unknown.) Suppose this involves personally identifiable information (PII) i.e. most of Google functionality. Suppose I'm the first to find and characterize it. Suppose it's exploitable, e.g. I can use it to see the PII of anybody I want. Suppose I'm not the most ethical person...
I have a choice: do I report it to Google as they would like me to do, and chance getting a few grand as a reward? Or, do I report it to blackhats, and try to get $ a few million?
Of course I'd go to the blackhats! When I do this, all users of Google are exposed to the risk of identity theft. Identity theft is the worst thing that can happen to you on the internet.
Meanwhile, Google thinks that it has successfully outsourced product quality! Great deal, huh? The stockholders love it. Conference speakers talking about latest trends LOVE it. But the end result is identify theft for large numbers of Google customers.
Outsourcing quality can't possibly work for a company in the long run.
Testing is not dead.
Sounds like he just gave the same speech James Whittaker gave as keynote at STAR West.
ReplyDelete