RE: Access to software versions: a rant

[Stuart Burnfield <slb -at- westnet -dot- com -dot- au>]

Gordon said:
- How you USE software is only learnable if you have access to the 
software itself. You can read all the specs in the world but they will 
only ever give you how the person who wrote it thinks the software 
should be used.

- If you give me access to the software I can learn it and take less 
time from the developers when asking them "what if...".

- You need to cover 'non-happy path' usage of the software in the docs 
and that only way you get to that is by having the software.

______________________________________________________________________

Superb. There are three excellent reasons just for starters.

To *A*ssure the *Q*uality of the docs Carrie needs to know how the 
software actually works now--not how it worked last week or how another 
document says it should work or will work.

I can't believe a 'head of QA' needs more than ten seconds of 
explanation to be convinced of this.

Stuart
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