A Proper QA Playlist

Last evening, as they worked late into the night on a production deployment, a tech lead and his tester asked my opinion on a proper QA playlist. Well, not exactly; no one ever asks for QA’s opinion, but they all surely receive it, often accompanied by expressive hand gestures or an icy stare.

So what is a good playlist for your iTunes while you’re breaking software? I offer the following which served as the sweet sounds by which I serenaded a previous collection of co-workers. The open floor plan ensured that everyone got to enjoy the music that properly captured the QA mood.

So here’s what I had on the playlist:

Artist Album
Iron Maiden Iron Maiden
Killers
A Matter of Life and Death
No Prayer for the Dying
The Number of the Beast
Piece of Mind
Powerslave
Seventh Son of a Seventh Son
Somewhere in Time
Fear of the Dark
Metallica Master of Puppets
Ride the Lightning
….And Justice for All
Metallica
Nullset Nullset
Pink Floyd The Wall
A Momentary Lapse of Reason
Animals
Dark Side of the Moon
Motley Crue Dr. Feelgood
Evanescence Fallen
Faith No More “Epic”
Queensrÿche Empire
Operation: Mindcrime
Dokken Beast from the East
Under Lock and Key
Back for the Attack
Heart “Barracuda”
John Cougar Mellancamp “Authority Song”
“When the Walls Come Crumblin’ Down”
Lillian Axe Psychoschizophrenia

Ah, the thundering threat of destruction that presaged QA. All it needs is some Wagner.

Apparently, too, the word got out that if QA was playing Metallica, it boded a very bad day. One morning, when I had queued up Master of Puppets to start the morning, I found a number of project managers/customer managers stopping by to try to placate QA.

YOU CANNOT PLACATE QA, YOU CAN ONLY SURVIVE QA (SOMETIMES).

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 9th, 2007 at 10:09 am by The Director and is filed under Miscellany. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

No Responses to “A Proper QA Playlist”

  1. gimlet Says:
    August 9th, 2007 at 1:49 pm

    I’d be interested in hearing responses from other QA types and other IT strains. I’ve found that many network and system admins favor early-90s “gangsta” rap. Nothing seems to get TCP packets moving like some ol’ Eazy E.

  2. DarkStar Says:
    August 15th, 2007 at 10:26 am

    Songs for QA Testing??
    How about…

    “Everything You Know is Wrong”
    -Weird Al
    “The Thrill is gone”
    -BB King
    “Who Needs Sleep”
    -BNL
    “Skills to Pay the Bills”
    -Beastie Boys
    “Just a Job to Do”
    -Genesis
    “Born Cross-Eyed”
    -Grateful Dead
    “All Wrong”
    -Morphine
    “Eraser”
    -NIN
    “Lonely Weekends”
    -Tom Petty

    Of course… these were chosen strictly for their titles.. I have no idea who would listen to such stuff. :)