tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13831777.post-52481675345751966342007-12-22T01:48:00.000-05:002007-12-22T01:48:00.000-05:00Isaac, thsnks for your thoughtful post. Let's say that you could release every month but instead you release every year. Let's also say that you go above and beyond on your testing efforts. You've got very high test coverage numbers and you are using decision based coverage instead of line coverage. It has been a long time since anybody found a bug, and you've fixed every bug you know about. Lastly, let's say that you developed in 30-day iterations and at the end of every iteration all functionality introduced during that iteration had all of its tests written during that iteration instead of at the end of the one year cycle.<BR/><BR/>Now at the end of this year you release your product. I guarantee that your customers will find problems. Let's say for the sake of simplicity that they find exactly 12 and each one is linked to functionality introduced in one of the 12 iterations. You waited 11 months to find the issue introduced in the first iteration that your customer would have found right away.<BR/><BR/>I'm not saying that you should rely on your customers to be part of your testing department. I'm only saying that despite your best efforts, it is inevitable that there will be issues that you only find after you release, so keep on testing, don't stop that. But release as often as you can.<BR/><BR/>Also in this (contrived) example, your customers were still exposed to the same number of bugs, just not all at the same time.<BR/><BR/>You are right that I am not suggesting that you forgo testing. My point about possibly having high quality without executing a test plan was that while possible, it definitely is highly unlikely. The point of doing the testing is to gain knowledge about the quality prior to release so that you can then act on that knowledge.<BR/><BR/>After reading your comment and writing this response I would say that a better moral of the story is "In addition to keeping your testing standards high, it is better to find problems that you are likely to only find by releasing to customers as soon as you possibly can. Therefore, release as often as you can." A bit more wordy, but perhaps a better representation of my point.Damon Poolehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16561311551267979837noreply@blogger.com