Re: Thank you for this informal D2005 fix

> >I take it by 'resources' you mean actual people (specifically core
> >developers and suchlike) doing the QA work, so it's a choice between time
> >spent on development of the new version and time spent fixing (or rather,
> >QA'ing) the bugs from the last one (or fixes thereto)?
> >
> >It's not the sort of thing you can put through a (sophisticated and
> >complex)
> >automated process and see lot's of tests passed and say 'right, that's
> >through'?
>
> Let's say you run it through all of your unit tests, production tests,
> hundreds of hours of CPU time, and it all checks out. Great!
>
> Now - who's going to write the readme? Who's going to coordinate the
> support folks? Who's going to update the web site? Who's going to
> prepare an installer? Oh - you need to test the installer too. On
> multiple O/S's. And SKU's. And uninstall the installer.

Are you serious?

- a readme is a few paragraphs saying what they updated and what problems
are considered fixed. It would contain approximately the same information
that whoever released the patches probably already put on his Borland Blog
announcing the hotfixes. estimate: 10 minutes max.

- what do you mean by 'coordinate the support folks'? Do you expect the
update that's gone through QA will not work and will need support? estimate:
0 minutes.

- they already have installers for Delphi 2005 patches 1, 2, and 3. How hard
can it be to modify an install script to inclluse the new patches? estimate
5 minutes to do it, 1-3 hours to test installing and uninstalling the
uopdtaes for the 3 SKUs on Win NT, 2000, 2000 Server, XP, 2003 server, 95,
98, ME (8 OS's x 3 sku's = 24 tests to be done, but there are probably a few
more OS's to test on once you take into account levels of patches) (I assume
that they already have 3 VMs for each of these OS's, with each Delphi SKU
installed respectively on these 3 VMs, so that all is needed is a new
snapshot or clone). But this is legwork, not rocket science, and would not
have to be done by particularly skilled staff. It would be start the VM,
install the new patch, make a snapshot, uninstall the patch, and check that
the appropriate changes have been made before and after installing the
patch.

- modifying the web site is uploading a file and putting a link in to the
new file. estimate 5-10 minutes

So I think it could be done in 4 man-hours, certainly in 8. The time
required for testing the install and uninstall may of course vary depending
on exactly what they look for after each install and uninstall of the update
patch. Maybe indeed it could be automated in something like FinalBuilder (if
you can automate the VM app) - the steps are almost mechanical: start the
VM, install the relevant update, look for certain files, if they're not
there flag it, uninstall the update, look that the certain files are not
there, if they are flag it. But I'm not sure how you'd deal with automating
the response to dialog boxes in the install program - perhaps some kind of
testing app like Automated QA might be able to handle this.

To me, you make it sound like you think Borland's work processes are
inadequate for a basic and straightforward tasks.

I personally think they could handle this just fine without too much
trouble. But if they can't, they have (along with the purchase of TeraQuest)
committed to CMMI process improvement methodologies. They are committed to
improving their processes. If they don't have it already, they should have
clear business processes (a clear delineation of the workflow and
responsibilities for each step along the way to producing the update and
releasing it to the website) and IT automation supporting those business
processes so that adding a new update patch for Delphi is not a particularly
time consuming or onerous task.

I don't think it's rocket science for a technology company of Borland's size
and accomplishments.

Lauchlan M


.

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