Why my project manager is a douche

[MrBlackDX]

So he asks me to write up a User Acceptance Test plan for a customer.

The first no-no here is that the software developer should not be specifying what the customer wants. The exception to this is when you work with extremely thick clients, such as this particular one. So this is sort of ok.

So I spend a week writing up a test plan, long story short it's a piece of art, it's set for the customer to have a testing period over 9 weeks, and this is 9 weeks at most.

He complains about the timescale, I tell him that the timescale also is divided by percentages, so the customer can decide how much time they have to test, and slide the percentages accordingly.

He complains about the image of suggesting it will take 9 weeks, I tell him that if we don't suggest at most it will take 9 weeks, then we are liable for not giving them the correct information. We tell them we have suggested 9 weeks, and if they want to test in a less amount of time, that's their problem not ours.

And now the fuckwit has just dropped the bomb that what he has asked me to do actually isn't a user test plan at all...!

He is going to sit in front of the customer, give them a demo, and hope they say "yeah looks good, where do I sign?" My "UAT plan" was supposed to be a schedule for him to run on the day so that he knew how to plan it out.

Not at one point does the user test this...

And what a jackass for even thinking showing them a system over 1 day or even 1 week is going to be accurate coverage.

[Aidan]

I'm very confused reading this to be honest.

[MrBlackDX]

I just needed a place to let out some steam

Won't make much sense unless you know much about software development lol...

[Aidan]

I'm a "Computer Programmer Analyst" student, so there are some parts that make sense.


-buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuttt a rant is a rant, and doesn't have to be perfect lol.

[ynnaD]

Software Development is the worst thing i ever had the unfortunante pleasure of having to learn, C++ can kiss my ass, Java was pretty cool tho. C# wasn't bad but i'm just not into Programming at all

[MrBlackDX]

Right well, a little insight into software development.

This image follows the Waterfall methodology, which is the basic and most easy to understand methodology for software development. In particular this is the V testing model;



So waterfall node by node;

Business Case = Sales pitch and initial deadlines and objectives
Requirements = The project plan and the initial phase of Analysis, which is gathering user's requirements.
System Specification = The Analyst creates a document which details how the software should be designed. This is explained at a "business" level, which is basically jargon for "non-technical wording".
System Design = Between the Analyst and Head Coder, they use the System Spec to draw up a Technical Spec. This is translating the "business" level design into a "technical" level design.
Component Design = This is the pre-plan of coding set agreed between the Head Coder and his coding team. This may or may not be documented, but should allow for consistent coding between coders.
Construct Component = The actual act of programming the software.

Testing V Model node by node;

Component Testing = Actually should be "Unit Testing", this is the coder who then runs a simple test against each piece of code.
Interface Testing = This is the head coder building the software from each component into a "build", he then runs interface tests to ensure that the software is uniform and stable.
System Testing = This is the bread and butter of software testing. So at this point, Test Scripts are created from the equivalent level, which is the business specification. These test scripts are "business" level explanation. The tester then tests the software by its GUI, not by its actual code, and performs a series of sub-tests (which I won't go into detail).
Acceptance Testing = This is testing performed usually by the Customer, this is where User Acceptance Testing (UAT) is performed. So because the user has stated the equivalent requirements, it then ensures that these requirements have been met by acceptance testing.
Release Testing = This is an overall test conducted at the end of UAT, to ensure that the system can be signed off and ready to test. Likewise this could be the initial "cautious" phase of utilising the software in a LIVE environment.

[MrBlackDX]

In a nutshell, my rant is about my project manager, who asked me to draw up a UAT plan.

This is wrong because Requirements are a customer input, so UAT must be a customer driven activity.

But I accepted this because this particular customer is stupid, so we are telling them how to test.

A UAT plan should comprise of an initial Sanity test (which is testing the core functionality of the system), followed by user tests, full system test scenarios, and then finally the equivalent of Release Testing (which can be bundled into UAT).

This document should take about a week to create.

He then told me that this is NOT what he wants (after I created it) and that what he wanted was to be able to be on site with the customer, run through the system with him guiding how it works (this is like a demonstration), and then the customer to be happy or not.

The second document would take a day or two to create. But the other thing is that it is more like a Sales Pitch.

Basically he has taken a massive dump on logic.

But what really pisses me off is that he tries to use technical terminology which he doesn't understand himself, to try to explain the situation, and that just gets the other people confused on what he is actually asking for.

[James]

C++ can kiss my ass

Classes

Classes everywhere.

[MrBlackDX]

Just had a meeting with the whole company including CEO and explained why they are all faggots if they think "only testing acceptance based without system testing" is a good idea.

Yesssssssss