When Technology Goes Up, Quality Goes Down?
Most of the time, if we’re referencing an interview here on the uTest blog, it’s generally one from our Testing the Limits series. Today will be an exception, thanks to an amazing interview with Bill Curtis on ComputerWeekly.com.
Bill’s central argument – and it’s not an argument you hear very often - is that “the pace of change in the IT industry is hampering software quality.” Not progressing quality, not enhancing quality, but hampering quality. Think about that for a second. When you’re done, take a look at a few of his key excerpts (in italics), followed by my commentary.
BC: “Every five years we have a major change in technology, so every time we get good at building quality code, we change the game. There are new technologies and new languages. You make more mistakes because you are on are on a learning curve. We need a discipline for adopting new technology.”
Couldn’t agree more! Consider the testing landscape from five years ago, 2008. Mobile apps were still very much in their infancy, BlackBerry was still a dominant player, HTML 5 had yet to make much of an impact, Flash was here to stay – I could go on. The point is that times change! Thus, the idea of a discipline dedicated to adopting new technology is indeed quite interesting and would certainly have value (and appeal) for QA teams.
The hard part, I suspect, would be in determining which technologies are worthy of such an exercise, as you would run the risk of teaching an entire department a technology or programming language that never fully takes hold. Also, who makes the call? The QA manager? The product team? The CTO? Obviously there would be a lot of details to iron out, but it’s an interesting idea nevertheless.
















