[Sigia-l] What do you know...

[Listera]

prady:

> Somehow, I don't associate MS with "design by testing". If they were
> testing their products, I shouldn't be using Firefox.

I was being only half facetious. :-)

Their product "design strategy" has been: "throw it against the wall and see
what sticks." That's what I meant by testing *on* users.

Anecdote: I was at the NYC introduction of MS Office, the prior generation.
A trade mag reporter commented on the paucity of new features and asked why
current users should upgrade. One VP on stage hemmed and hawed about
underlying changes, new XML arch, etc. His boss, also on stage, realizing
that that answer wasn't satisfying took the microphone and explained that
with this release of Office MS took another approach. They had many of their
engineers listen in on thousands of support calls from ordinary customers
and it became obvious to them that some obscenely high percentage of the
calls were users asking for features that were *already* in Office. So they
decided to prune and rearrange. Meaning, in other words, that for a number
of generations the most widely used product out there had its "design" done
by testing *on* users: throw out 1,368 features on the proverbial user wall
and, not by considered design but by sheer attrition, see what sticks.

Another variation on this, of course, is MS "design by patching" which
describes their security architecture, not so much designed as it's randomly
patched.

----
Ziya

"Innovate as a last resort."