I hate feeling this stupid.

[elfs]

So, we're pipelining different versions of our product at work, and i've been pulled off my lovely new development project to do QA in the mistaken belief that bodies thrown at a problem will somehow get the problem fixed faster. Instead, in the past six hours I have managed to accupy for significant periods of time the testing resources of at least four other people and I still don't have a QA testbed that I can test on.

There are also assumptions in the testing procedure I've been given that I don't understand. "Run these programs" with parameters that I'm sure most of the testing guys have stored in their heads, but I don't. "Insert a blank XYZ drive," but I don't know where blank XYZ drives are stored. "Configure for this kind of network." Oh, great, I haven't configured for a non-TCP-based network in twenty freaking years.

Am I getting old that this is more of a chore and less an adventure?

Comments

[fallenpegasus]

Sounds like some clueless manager heard of Linus's Law ("with enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow") and thought that it trumped one of Brooks' Laws ("adding manpower to a project makes it later"). The first takes advantage of the fact that QAing doesnt require tight coupling between people, but the second stems from the fact that training is slow and ties up both the trainers and the trainees.

[kyriani.livejournal.com]

They do this all the time where I work, only they call it "cross-training" (even though it only happens when there's a project that is late and under high pressure). >_< It sucks, and completely doesn't work, yet companies keep doing it. Its probably one of the least efficient uses of resources I can think of (unless their real goal is to iron out their processes and actually have people who can fill multiple roles, but it doesnt sound like that in your case at all). >_<
I feel sorry for any developer who doesn't have QA training trying to become a tester cold. *sigh* Best of luck! *HUGS*

[xlana.livejournal.com]

I remember reading a book called "the mythical man-hour" or something like that regarding this practice. If I remember right, and it was over fifteen years ago when I read it, this practice of throwing people at a problem didn't really work and in fact, slowed the process down because of the training involved. I wish more managers knew that.

My sympathies, Elf.