As a software tester by trade, I find that not a whole lot can make it nearly as interesting or stimulating as actually writing the software in the first place.
However, properly written test cases do help. And by properly written I don't just mean exhaustive. Written with intelligence, test cases will test all possible code paths without boring the tester to death repeating the same steps over and over.
Also, and I don't know if this will help, but I tend to populate my test cases with test data inspired by popular culture and films. My first person to use is DarthV@deathstar.com.
Our CEO is extremely tree-friendly, and so we are discouraged from printing anything. I'd say we have about the most paperless office I've ever seen. I almost never print anything, and can go two weeks without doing so.
As revolting as it is, we use Lotus Notes 6.5 (I know there are better things, but we've built ourselves around it and are now stuck with it) and I find the markup on Word works well for me (and I review a lot of documents). In fact, my job involves document management, and so you would expect me to print a lot - yet I don't.
We've evolved a culture where if someone actually prints something out to show to people or mark up, they're considered a bit backward, and are shunned appropriately. I'd say the average employee prints about 10 pages a month, tops, in our office.
I've also noticed this, and considered doing a little research into the psychology of coders - especially those employed as enterprise developers. I've noticed that a disproportionate number of the coders at my company are either color-blind, left-handed or both. Does anyone have any insight into this? Left-handedness is fairly easy to explain, but the color-blindness comes as a bit of a surprise.
The Seacom cable has been operational for over a month, and so far we have only heard rumours of some ISP's "Slashing" their prices down to higher than the prices currently offered by the cheapest ISPs - and still no increase in monthly caps on the horizon. All this cable means is that Telkom can sell the same bandwidth to ISPs at the same prices, and make larger profits.
The only good news is that Telkom just listed on the JSE, so buy some stock before someone figures out they're making ridiculous profits.
As a South African, there is a little more to the story. Yes, Telkom is appropriately nicknamed 'Hellkom', and yes, their data speeds are ridiculously slow, and notoriously unreliable (The standard line that most households can afford is 384kb, with 512kb lines being prohibitively expensive. All lines enjoy downtime at least once a month. Most large businesses make do with one or two 4MB lines). However, the company in question only leased their line from Telkom (who have a monopoly on all lines around here, more or less), and did not use Telkom as their ISP. This has allowed Telkom to completely escape any "blame" for the slow speeds.
Also, 4gb was a remarkably optimistic chunk of data to try transfer. Most people in SA would never dream of trying to send that much data via the internet. Once could argue that the "race" was deliberately made impossible for Telkom to win. This doesn't excuse the fact that if the data packet had been 200MB the pidgeon probably still would have won.
The main problem is education: people in this country do not know that they are entitled to faster lines at cheaper rates, and consider paying around $35p/m about right for a 384kb line capped at 1GB. If you shop around you can find the same line capped at 3GB for around $15, but most people do not know they have access to these prices. The irony is that Telkom has access to 20MB+ lines, and have never been able to legitimately explain why they cap lines, making it difficult for competing ISPs (Telkom is also an ISP) to offer reasonable prices.
So glad this made it onto Slashdot!
I get that kind of response a lot at work (although they're less mean). I am a fairly junior member of staff, but I (to use more management jargon) "serve a strategic function", and so you could say I'm senior management's rat on the development floor. That is, I make sure the developers aren't wasting the clients' (and our) money.
There is a lot to be said for letting developers run wild. But when clients want to see a plan and a contract, and we want to make sure we haven't agreed to deliver a telepathic user interface in 6 months, someone has to do some paperwork.
Nobody likes it, but anyone who has been at my company for a while realizes that it is a necessary evil. I do my best to make it as little hassle as possible, but at the end of the day someone has to do it and we feel that it saves money for us and adds value in the long run.
I do projects assurance work for a small development company. We have some very well-paid, highly skilled and extremely experienced developers, who occasionally are made Team Leads. This means they have to do project governance. We use PRINCE2, which is far less-suited to software development, and there is a definite problem going on here.
It immediately cuts the time these developers can spend doing actual project work - something they grouse about constantly. On the other hand, we also have an army of young first- or second-year analysts, all of whom embrace our governance, and generally perform the project administration side of things far better than their more-experienced colleagues.
On the other other hand, I have noticed that the younger consultants lack the project experience to plan creatively and come up with ways to make the process work for them. They would if they could, while the older ones can but couldn't be asked. I fear that over time the negative attitude towards governance that lingers from the older generation will infect the new guys.
Our company recruits annually, and is always running a number of internal projects. What I advocate is that the new consultants spend a while running small internal initiatives during part of their time, and then spend their second year as the administrators on client projects, before being able to "earn" not having to worry so much about all the extra overhead that comes with that sort of thing. It might also help with retaining experienced staff.
Slashdot Mirror
As a software tester by trade, I find that not a whole lot can make it nearly as interesting or stimulating as actually writing the software in the first place. However, properly written test cases do help. And by properly written I don't just mean exhaustive. Written with intelligence, test cases will test all possible code paths without boring the tester to death repeating the same steps over and over. Also, and I don't know if this will help, but I tend to populate my test cases with test data inspired by popular culture and films. My first person to use is DarthV@deathstar.com.
Our CEO is extremely tree-friendly, and so we are discouraged from printing anything. I'd say we have about the most paperless office I've ever seen. I almost never print anything, and can go two weeks without doing so. As revolting as it is, we use Lotus Notes 6.5 (I know there are better things, but we've built ourselves around it and are now stuck with it) and I find the markup on Word works well for me (and I review a lot of documents). In fact, my job involves document management, and so you would expect me to print a lot - yet I don't. We've evolved a culture where if someone actually prints something out to show to people or mark up, they're considered a bit backward, and are shunned appropriately. I'd say the average employee prints about 10 pages a month, tops, in our office.
I've also noticed this, and considered doing a little research into the psychology of coders - especially those employed as enterprise developers. I've noticed that a disproportionate number of the coders at my company are either color-blind, left-handed or both. Does anyone have any insight into this? Left-handedness is fairly easy to explain, but the color-blindness comes as a bit of a surprise.
The Seacom cable has been operational for over a month, and so far we have only heard rumours of some ISP's "Slashing" their prices down to higher than the prices currently offered by the cheapest ISPs - and still no increase in monthly caps on the horizon. All this cable means is that Telkom can sell the same bandwidth to ISPs at the same prices, and make larger profits. The only good news is that Telkom just listed on the JSE, so buy some stock before someone figures out they're making ridiculous profits.
As a South African, there is a little more to the story. Yes, Telkom is appropriately nicknamed 'Hellkom', and yes, their data speeds are ridiculously slow, and notoriously unreliable (The standard line that most households can afford is 384kb, with 512kb lines being prohibitively expensive. All lines enjoy downtime at least once a month. Most large businesses make do with one or two 4MB lines). However, the company in question only leased their line from Telkom (who have a monopoly on all lines around here, more or less), and did not use Telkom as their ISP. This has allowed Telkom to completely escape any "blame" for the slow speeds. Also, 4gb was a remarkably optimistic chunk of data to try transfer. Most people in SA would never dream of trying to send that much data via the internet. Once could argue that the "race" was deliberately made impossible for Telkom to win. This doesn't excuse the fact that if the data packet had been 200MB the pidgeon probably still would have won. The main problem is education: people in this country do not know that they are entitled to faster lines at cheaper rates, and consider paying around $35p/m about right for a 384kb line capped at 1GB. If you shop around you can find the same line capped at 3GB for around $15, but most people do not know they have access to these prices. The irony is that Telkom has access to 20MB+ lines, and have never been able to legitimately explain why they cap lines, making it difficult for competing ISPs (Telkom is also an ISP) to offer reasonable prices. So glad this made it onto Slashdot!
There is a lot to be said for letting developers run wild. But when clients want to see a plan and a contract, and we want to make sure we haven't agreed to deliver a telepathic user interface in 6 months, someone has to do some paperwork.
Nobody likes it, but anyone who has been at my company for a while realizes that it is a necessary evil. I do my best to make it as little hassle as possible, but at the end of the day someone has to do it and we feel that it saves money for us and adds value in the long run.
It immediately cuts the time these developers can spend doing actual project work - something they grouse about constantly. On the other hand, we also have an army of young first- or second-year analysts, all of whom embrace our governance, and generally perform the project administration side of things far better than their more-experienced colleagues.
On the other other hand, I have noticed that the younger consultants lack the project experience to plan creatively and come up with ways to make the process work for them. They would if they could, while the older ones can but couldn't be asked. I fear that over time the negative attitude towards governance that lingers from the older generation will infect the new guys.
Our company recruits annually, and is always running a number of internal projects. What I advocate is that the new consultants spend a while running small internal initiatives during part of their time, and then spend their second year as the administrators on client projects, before being able to "earn" not having to worry so much about all the extra overhead that comes with that sort of thing. It might also help with retaining experienced staff.