[maemo-developers] Quality Assurance and Extras-testing discussion on IRC

[From: Andrew Flegg]

Graham wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 04, 2009 at 05:36:26PM +0000, Andrew Flegg wrote:
> >
> >      * QA is good.
> >      * The criteria are a good start, but need tweaks (see thread)
> >      * The packages UI needs some streamlining for testers.
> >      * As a tester, a better reminder of the checklist when checking
> >          would be good. I also like the ease with which I can give feedback.
> >      * As a developer, I don't *think* I want to be constrained with
> >          "release early, release often" when fixing bugs or introducing new
> >          small features (i.e. karma resets to zero).
>
> My views are generally in line with Andrew's 

Cool. Hopefully these views are fairly inline with the other opinions which have been offered.

> except I would add the point
> that I think this process has to be focused on preventing serious issues
> from escaping, not on wider quality issues such as whether applications are
> usable, pretty, etc.  We have a user rating system to allow the good
> applications to rise above the poor ones -- that is not the purpose of **this**
> process.  Reporting all bugs found is great.  But only "dangerous" issues should
> cause blockages.  Those could include issues such as poor quality descriptions
> (or upgrade-descriptions) because they may mislead or confuse people into
> installing the application.  But they don't include UX issues except ones
> which "break" things (for example, an unresponsive screen).

You've got me convinced, 100% behind that.

> We have to be aware that every thumbs-down is a message that we are rejecting
> the application.

Indeed. A point which should be made clear to testers (and the corollary, every thumbs up is an endorsement that this piece of software won't cause a user unexpected problems).

Cheers,

Andrew

-- 
Andrew Flegg -- mailto:andrew at bleb.org  |  http://www.bleb.org/