Still wondering why something got put in that MIGHT possibly be used later on, but does nothing now except break shit.

majmalphunktion wrote on Aug 30^th, 2013 at 12:12am:



You got this one tested really well!!!

majmalphunktion wrote on Aug 30^th, 2013 at 12:12am:


You think it's just a matter of our not being happy? Take a couple steps back from it all and have a better look. It has to do with overall QUALITY. Is there no one in your department with the clout to tell the decision makers that Something Is Rotten In The State Of Denmark? Pushing changes into updates/patches before they are polished (okay, fine, polished is asking a lot), before they are PASSABLE has a cumulative effect on the game as a whole. Something FUNDAMENTAL has got to change at Turbine. I understand that I have no idea what kind of pressures your team and the dev team are under to produce. But somebody somewhere up the chain has GOT to be smart enough to understand that DDO is bleeding from a thousand cuts. Running through the razor blades FASTER is no way to stem the flow.

Nope. He, or someone, needs to step UP. Get a few of themselves together, figure out where in the suit echelon to start the movement, get the guy drunk or laid or whatever, and start him crusading. Play politics. Bribe someone. Frame an exec with a skanky hooker. I dunno, figure out a way.

I think most of us are past nerdraging, though yeah, we are gamer geeks....

Feklar wrote on Aug 30^th, 2013 at 3:03am:


Dumb.

Flav wrote on Aug 30^th, 2013 at 4:03am:


Smart.

Correct.  There are very few, if any, software companies that have a QA department that has the ability to say:
"This product will not ship with the state it is in".

It is rather, "Hey guys, these are the bugs we've found in the short amount of time you've given us to test, and with the understaffed department I have".

Then the suits say "Okay, we can live with that... ship it"

bob the builder wrote on Aug 30^th, 2013 at 8:37am:



Sadly... I lived the transition of Telecom from the first model to the second one...

A fucking software update for one single operator was a fucking 3 years project ( 2 Years Development 2 Years Testing, 1 Year deployment... Yes that's more than 3 years, but Testing was happening while development and deployment )... then it was a 10 year support project with a dedicated team of tester/troubleshooter/support engineer to reproduce each and every fucking bug reported by the customer (  or to troubleshoot on the live system  ). [ at that time support was free ]

Now development is 9 Month, Testing 1 month, Deployment 2 month...
And the shit we produce is so riddled with bugs that it's impressive it does mostly what it is supposed to do. Support lasts as long as you pay for it, with various contract types linked to how many cases you are allowed to open in a year and if you want an emergency 24/7 support on call.

But the operators are fine with that, as long as it mostly work as intended it costs 3 times less than the old way of doing things that's the only thing that interest them now, they don't care if the maintenance cost is important, it's an OPEX, while the Software Updates and the Hardware is a CAPEX... Having Big CAPEX is bad in IT and Telecom nowadays...
( well if you have played a bit with excel, budget management and such you know what I mean )

TL;DR
Most people nowadays are used to things that mostly work as they should and break relatively fast. They just replace the thing when it's broken.
In the case of software, it's easier to patch, and patch the patch of the patch of the patch of the update of the hotfix than to thoroughly test things and delay shipping.

Arkat wrote on Aug 30^th, 2013 at 8:49am:


No.

I was expecting Epic loot from epic 20th completions but apparently that hasn't been implemented yet.

arjiwan wrote on Aug 30^th, 2013 at 2:48am:


Actually, Feklar was more than reasonable, IMHO.

Feklar wrote on Aug 30^th, 2013 at 3:03am:


This sounds like a great way to get fired.

Regarding QA not being gatekeepers. Well... there's the "Q", and there's the "A". The definition seems self evident.

Regarding a good way to get fired. That's why you don't do it alone. Find those co-workers that have some altitude on the ladder and feel the same way. Don't issue any ultimatums obviously, but show that there is a solidaritous group. Have the balls. Worst case, get fired, find a new job with a company that has a higher level of care. Comes down to that - how much is your integrity worth?

majmalphunktion wrote on Aug 29^th, 2013 at 11:59pm:


Why was that code in the Maintenance stream to begin with? Clearly that belongs in the Development stream. You guys use a Code Versioning System that supports Branch and Merge operations, right? Or do you work only in a single trunk and Rollback is all you've left yourselves?

Getting chocolate in your peanut butter is funny and tasty, getting development code in your maintenance code means you can neither develop nor maintain well.

This is why we can't have nice things.

Maj, I feel your pain. I'm a software developer and I've been in shops where QA is an afterthought, and is resented by developers. I suspect you take crap at both ends - from us here and from the people at Turbine who want the warm fuzzy feeling of doing a good job without the actual work of doing a good job (not that they all fall in that class). I don't know if it will help you, but while I was going through the Certified Quality Engineer certification process I came across a quote that I've successfully used to justify bringing QA in early on my projects, maybe it will help you get a say earlier in the process there.

The quote is by Harold Dodge but Deming made it famous, "You cannot inspect quality into a product. The quality is there or it isn't by the time it's inspected."

Good luck, and thanks for not just giving up.