I’m starting to think we should stop saying ‘testing’ or ‘quality assurance’ and just start calling it ‘measuring if your are actually finished’.

The idea that the requirements traceability matrix is actually part of the process of managing what you are delivering has been kinda lost.

There is sometimes a backlash to this too. I had a great experience many years ago when a major program was basically given a month to do 8 months worth of development.

I didn’t like it at first but I soon realise that the strategy was to just start the testing processes (which included managing the requirements traceability matrix) as early as possible.

The independent testing team just started answering the ‘are we done yet?’ question as early as possible.

At first the answer was ‘no’. And then they realised that didn’t really have a formal way of answering the question at all. And finally… much later… the question was answered: ‘we are done. this is the proof.’.

I’m starting to think we should stop saying ‘testing’ or ‘quality assurance’ and just start calling it ‘measuring if your are actually finished’.

The idea that the requirements traceability matrix is actually part of the process of managing what you are delivering has been kinda lost.

There is sometimes a backlash to this too. I had a great experience many years ago when a major program was basically given a month to do 8 months worth of development.

I didn’t like it at first but I soon realise that the strategy was to just start the testing processes (which included managing the requirements traceability matrix) as early as possible.

The independent testing team just started answering the ‘are we done yet?’ question as early as possible.

At first the answer was ‘no’. And then they realised that didn’t really have a formal way of answering the question at all. And finally… much later… the question was answered: ‘we are done. this is the proof.’.