pcplantdb

["John Schinnerer" <john@eco-living.net>]

Aloha,

> +Also John, you wrote “I'm guessing by "user testing" you mean either
> "users testing functionality" (a.k.a. functional testing) or "usability
> testing," which means "real users" feeding back to us on how *usable* it
> is for *them* - which is *not* the same as whether it works at all or not
> or how usable *we* think it is! Which do you mean in this case?”  I
> understand the difference, and that we need to practice both kinds of
> testing.  I assume you will be responsible for both, so when (what week)
> should I insert them in the project plan?

Testing will be happening all through the project.
Here's how testing actual software will look once there is some software
to test:

Every so often as they are coding HG, the programmers will produce a
"build."  BTW we need to decide on a build plan - time-based,
feature-based, milestone-based, etc. - Chad and Rich, any preferences?

A build is basically a "complete" version of the software up to a certain
point.

So when a (starting with the first) build is "released" (put into the
testing environment, replacing the previous build) by the programmers,
I/we will start testing it and reporting bugs.
The programmers continue to develop the features of HG and fix bugs we
report in one build, incorporating their work into what will become the
next build.
After some amount of time and/or work, the programmers will release the
next build.  There may be added features, and there may be bugs they claim
to have fixed.
Testing will then continue with the new build.  New features will be
tested and bug fixes will be "regressed," a fancy word that means we see
if they really fixed 'em by trying to reproduce them in the newer build.

And so it goes...testing and building and testing and building.

So in short, you can put "testing" down all through the project plan.
I/we will be testing our design before we even have any working
software...in fact we already are, though not very formally since we don't
have an issue tracker yet.


John Schinnerer - MA, Whole Systems Design
------------------------------------------
- Eco-Living -
Whole Systems Design Services
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john@eco-living.net
http://eco-living.net