A semi-hard landing....

[Ethan Metsger]

On Sun, 22 Apr 2007 17:18:15 -0500, Gene Kim-Eng <techwr at genek.com> wrote:

> I wonder if this is yet another characterisitc of the way things
> work in the software industry.  In most companies I've
> worked in we did research, designed, reviewed, revised and
> re-reviewed multiple times before ever cutting the first piece
> of metal (i.e., "measure twice, cut once").  The idea that
> anyone on the team - engineers, tech writers, etc. - should
> be whacking out "deliverables" from day one without first
> doing the preliminaries would be considered madness.

Good software engineering companies do the same, of course.  My experience  
in the industry is fairly limited, but I have found that proper design  
trumps extensive QA.  One company I worked for had testing all figured  
out, and they did it extremely well.  Unfortunately, the software was so  
poorly engineered that fixing one test failure would likely induce others.

Another company (somewhat smaller) had a relatively poor grasp of testing  
with considerably less QA steps; but the product as a whole was engineered  
much better.

It just depends on where you go.

Best,

Ethan
uppertank.net/ethanm