QA Hates You

Not my novel John Donnelly’s Gold. (Available for Kindle at 99 cents! Also in paperback!)

Rather, it’s one of the books based on the Mass Effect video games:

The recent release of Mass Effect: Deception, a new novel written by William C. Dietz and published by Del Rey, didn’t sit well with fans.

Upon its release, a lengthy Google document was created outlining many of the book’s errors. BioWare has since acknowledged the issue and is releasing a new version of the book with the errors corrected.

When I was revising my novel for publication, I found such errors as an eight day week, a semiautomatic pistol that changed to a revolver at its next appearance, and one unholy flaw of realism that remained in the book because I couldn’t write around it. And that’s working within the framework of my own creation, not a universe already created, populated, and maintained through a series of preceding video games, novels, and other interactive media.

The Google doc with the error list is awful long.

Which goes to prove: writers need editors, and by extension, developers should not test their own code.

Apparently, Ally Bank software failed to pay interest to CD holders:

We goofed.

That is the message Ally Financial is delivering to some of its customers.

The online lender mistakenly failed in December to credit year-end interest earned by some savers who hold its certificates of deposit. The company also provided these customers with incorrect tax information that didn’t reflect the interest they should have earned.

Uh, oops. This might be the first case of a bank itself doing a Salami attack.

On the other hand, no doubt they made the launch date.

Amazon.com tries to get me to buy a “new” Pink Floyd album–actually, a re-release–with an email full of hidden meanings to ponder as I listen to the album:

What does it mean?

I think it means Amazon has joined the ranks of the indolent who don’t really care that much if their email marketing goes out rife with errors.

After all, so many others do. The users will forgive and forget.

You, ungentle QAer, don’t let your developers throw up pages that instruct the user not to close the window or click the back button, right? Of course not. You’re not an amateur.

But here’s a good blog post taking them apart anyway.

Reader Rich M. sends along another possible outcome this February 29:

I guess that’s one work around.

Another broken slideshow, courtesy Popular Mechanics:

Note how the top and bottom incrementers don’t match. Also, note the slide is not displaying.

Notice how the comments complain it doesn’t work. You would think that someone would fix it. But there’s budget for doing it, not doing it right.

Slide shows are a bit of a bugger to test because you have to test all the navigational devices, not just one set. And you have to make sure the right thing displays.

I draw your attention to this post from January 2009 about another type of test case to consider during leap year.

Not only do you have to accommodate the date of February 29, 2012, but you need to also check any calculations that count the days.

The people behind the New York Giants’ Web site were ready. Too ready.

The New York Giants web staff committed a major gaffe on Saturday and may have given the Patriots some bulletin board material for the Super Bowl.

On Saturday, NYGiants.com posted an ad on their website declaring the Giants Super Bowl Champions.

The ad also contained a link to buy championship merchandise.

Someone eventually noticed the error and took down the ad.

Unfortunately, it was a prophetic defect.

Poor Gimlet. All the time, he a-send me Scandinavian and German death metal songs hoping to entice me to post them as QA music, and what sticks?

Super Mario Brothers: The 8-Bit Opera

and Conan: The Musical

I can’t help it if Finnish dark metal sounds all the same to me (well, except there are more double-a vowel sounds than American dark metal), but these dang things stick in my head.

Bonus assignment for the week: Explete “Crom!” when your project manager announces something at a stand-up this week.

I hit Dice.com to check out the local job market action, but instead of letting me go about my bidness, immediately the home page asks me to take a poll wherein I could win a Kindle. All the better for reading a $.99 copy of John Donnelly’s Gold, I think, so I click through to it.

And then I get to this particular bit of logical Möbius strip:

To clarify: The control is labeled What did you accomplish on Dice.com today? (Select all that apply)

However, not one of the checkboxes is labeled None of these.

So to continue to the next step, if you want to continue, you must lie. And remember, the entrance to this quiz is on page load of Dice.com. That is, before you have accomplished anything at all.

Me, I didn’t lie: I eventually checked Other and Specified I got a blog post out of it.

What’s the lesson here, lads and lasses? Read the labels of the controls you’re checking, and make sure they make sense and make sure any enforcement rules upon them make sense vis-à-vis that label text.

So I installed the new full CD version of Intuit QuickBooks, which is adware designed to get you to buy a lot of Intuit additional services disguised as accounting software. Now, if you’re like me, you’re not into the intricacies of actual accounting nor the myriad business rules that the various state and Federal governments change upon a whim, but you rely on software and a good accountant (or, sometimes, an accountant, although I’d like to add my current accountant is a good accountant unlike previous engagements who continue to bill me a small amount every year for simply having my address in their files).

Where was I? Oh, yes. I was talking about trusting your application, particularly one with complicated rules whose violation might result in a prison sentence. You want to trust that application, don’t you? So do I.

But I get the software installed and get into the mandatory registration (that is, give us personal information so we can target more in-application advertising pop-ups to you), and I get confronted with obvious slops on the design.

To whit:

A couple missing lines and slurred text, probably caused by poor compression or sizing.

Next up:

A stray bracket in the corner.

Man, oh man, I can’t wait to find out what strange punctuation marks it leaves in my figures.

Do I trust the application? Not so much. Which is why I don’t use it for much more than a glorified check register. And if it continues with its unrepentant, unrelenting barrage of “Collect credit cards with Intuit!”, “Print checks with Intuit!”, “Let Intuit have access to all your financial accounts!” banners popping up before I can pay my bills, I won’t have to trust it in the future, as I move to Microsoft Excel where it’s nice and quiet.

Over at Forbes.com, Susannah Breslin posts This Is Why Your Employees Hate You.

Basically, here three order list points boil down to 1)You’re hired into a new company and don’t get the lay of the land before you start making a mess, 2) You’re unlikeable, and 3) You are not a leader.

As you might know, I think #1 is very important, and I’ve harped on it on occasion here. When you’re hired in as a manager, you have (or have convinced someone that you have) skill and ideas applicable to leading people in doing whatever you’re managing. You might have led a team in some other industry doing something similar, or you might even have been working within the same industry for a competitor or some related organization. Be that as it may, you don’t know how things are done in your new organization, and until you do, you should probably avoid upsetting the apple cart with your new ideas and processes which are really only old ideas and processes that might have worked at your last employer. At your new posting, some things are done that way because they’ve always been done that way, but some things are done that way because they work for your new employer and new employees. Until you can tell them apart, you don’t know where your new ideas are improvements or impediments.

As to number 2, remember, lads and lasses, there’s a fine line between being a jerk and being confident and right. Regardless of which side of that line you’re on, people who don’t like you or what you’re saying will think and say you’re a jerk. So be professional, but be confident and tell people the hard truths. Clearly. Dare I say, bluntly? I DARE.

And for number 3, we’ve seen QA managers like this, haven’t we? Just glad to be sitting at the big table and unafraid to rock the boat. You’re not going to add anything dodging that responsibility, and when it comes time to trim budget, if nobody remembers you saying anything about anything, especially not saying anything that stuck up for anything, they’re going to wonder why you’re on the payroll in the first place.

So do what Ms. Breslin says. Or the opposite of what she says. You’ll be a better manager for it.

But know these are not the reasons QA hates you. QA hates you because QA hates everybody.

You know, when this blog first started, I used to noodle around existing Web sites, find errors on their Web forms, and do some commentary on them. I haven’t been in that habit for a while, so you might think the quality of applications in the wild has improved. Oh, but no.

Take the Progressive Insurance contact us form:

Now, if you don’t select a topic before you click Submit, it asks for a topic. But only a topic

When you select a topic, it changes the fields on the form to reflect what they want for that kind of inquiry (enquiry for our R.P. friends). If you click Submit then, it shows you a list of the fields you need to fill out:

But if you click the Reset button to reset the form, well, that’s not cricket (cricket for our R.P. friends):

You know, any time your form changes the controls on the screen due to AJAX or other techniques, it’s a different form. And it never hurts to check your reset button in various forms of filling out the form, especially if there are look-ups or state changes as you fill out the form.

UPDATE: Welcome, Progressive Insurance readers!

Madhouse “6″. From before many of you kids were born.

Here’s the heartwarming story of an advertising agency that was on top of the world five years ago, but isn’t any more: The King’s Comeuppance: How the hottest ad agency of the aughts fell from grace.

Key paragraph:

“They’re much more important than the client, in their minds,” says Peter De Lorenzo, editor in chief of the car commentary site AutoExtremist.com. “They make ads to amuse themselves.”

Holy cats, that’s a bunch of people in software development, too, ainna?

Another week, another war. Or at least another heroic sacrificial holding action.

“Wars” by Hurt.

The chick doesn’t build UIs, but she does use them. And she doesn’t like some elements of them.

I don’t normally work in the UX/UI design world, but I know enough from constantly filling out web forms that too many designs out there are destined for a special ring of data Hell. If you’ve followed any of my web form rants on Twitter, you may have heard this before…but it should be repeated.

Go learn her list of peccadilloes and think about your own. Then, bother your designers and developers when they do something convenient for themselves once, but annoying to users thousands of times.

(Thanks to gimlet for the link.)

UPDATE: Karen Lopez has emailed me to let me know she is a chick, not a guy. I’ve changed the pronouns and whatnot to reflect that.

The application could handle it. The business behind the application? Not so much.

You need to be careful about what you promise—especially when you make a promise on social media.

This adage is ringing loud and clear for Toronto-based Timothy’s Coffee. In an effort last month to grow its Facebook fan base, the company ran a promotion saying that anyone who “liked” its page would receive four free 24-pack boxes of single-serve coffee. As the Toronto Star reports, this was rather generous, as these boxes retail for over $17 CAD each.

A contest aggregating site picked up the promotion and, as you can imagine, responses poured in, reports the Star. Problem is, the stock of product was depleted within three days of the launch, yet Timothy’s still sent emails telling people their coffee was on the way.

The best part? This is an EPIC WIN! for Timothy’s Coffee’s interactive agency, since a promotion so successful that it makes headlines is AWESOME! It’ll be in all the presentations from here on out.

As always, you have to remember that the little numbers on the screen match up with numbers somewhere else in real life. And your application can be one hundred percent consistent with itself, but if its business rules and limits do not align with the real life it represents, it’s a worthless application.

(Link seen via tweet, but I forget whose. Sorry.)

Find some of my other work elsewhere on the Web:

“Trouble Tickets Are Your Business” in ST & QA Magazine.

Book recommendations in The Testing Circus.

Here’s a little music for the meeting where you unveil the product to the client, and they get that stricken look on their faces because they don’t remember asking or signing off on that.

“Everything” by Divine Sorrow.