Over the past quarter, as my own web development skills have taken a significant ramp-up – I know how to use CSS float styles! – I’ve begun taking an eye to the regard of QA and its importance within rapid-development commercial environments.
Across the board as an industry we are breaking out the latest tools (eg. UGC, social communities, ala Web 2.0!) , harnessing emerging technologies (eg. web services, SEO, SEM), and putting our best foot forward on international standings. Reading David Lowe’s entry on ‘Web Quality Assurance?‘ only affirms this industry-wide issue.
What we aren’t doing within the Internet builders‘ world is:
Pacing ourselves:
Invariably, the sector is set for another burst. As innovation curbs, we need to plan for the long-term; I’d father fade away and hope for another long-term swing than burn out.
Taking a progressive approach to development:
We haven’t in the past, and to this day aren’t building site architectures with search engines/accessibility as the focal point of a design then adding on additional functionality (eg. Javascript, Flash, jQuery). We’re either simply getting greedy and avoiding this approach or not effectively selling our products to cover the cost of long-term projects.
QA’ing released source-code on a line-by-line basis:
If bad code is released, it is the developer’s fault for writing the bad code and the QA officer for failing to identify the fault.
…you don’t blame fruit-pickers for the odd bad apple and buy it, you put the apple down and don’t buy it!
I feel this point leaves the greatest sour taste over time, as companies that do not put in place reliable QA procedures are losing clients through negative press – which, if it becomes a major competitor in organic SERPs (eg. DellHell), requires online reputation services to resolve – and bad word of mouth through past client experience.
This is my own personal opinion as an Australian Web developer; what’s your take?
