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We have three full time testers in Actinic. (Incidentally none of them are Hungarian, contrary to rumours). These guys carry out around two weeks of solid regression testing on every new release of Catalog/Business, as well as testing every bug fix individually before that.
It's also been suggested that we pay some people from the user community to do further "real world" testing, and this is something that we are considering.
However, alpha and beta testing is still crucial in a way that isn't helped by either of the other approaches. The thing that can't be covered by a limited number of testers is the huge diversity of different environments found out in the wild.
If quite a few people simply download a new version, add a section and a product and upload the site, place an order and download it, then the worst "environmental" problems will be caught. If nobody does this, the problems will be found when the software goes on general release.
I guess that the benefits of alpha and beta testing are tenuous for individuals, but there are some. For people interested in the new features, they get an early peek and sometimes things can be adjusted in the light of feedback. People can also ensure that Actinic is likely to work in their own environment, and will upgrade their particular snapshot, as bugs reported back from external testing go straight into the development team, who are doing nothing but bug fixing at that point. Then there is the issue of expertise - poeple who are selling themselves as Actinic experts stay ahead of the game.
Obviously, nobody has to take part, but for those of you who don't want to, I would ask that you don't discourage others. The more people that participate, the better off we will all be.
Chris
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The more people that participate, the better off we will all be
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It's also been suggested that we pay some people from the user community to do further "real world" testing, and this is something that we are considering.
However, alpha and beta testing is still crucial in a way that isn't helped by either of the other approaches. The thing that can't be covered by a limited number of testers is the huge diversity of different environments found out in the wild.
Just My Opinion
Darren
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Originally posted by JanYou are probably not going to want to hear this but my MU works really well and was definately worth upgrading to. I don't make a lot of changes to content on my sites but it is nice to be able to stay at my desk when I use it. You get one administrator on at a time per site (so 1 person editing content) and multiple order processors. Enterprise allows multiple people to edit content though.
Regards,Chris Ashdown
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Originally posted by cbarlingHowever, alpha and beta testing is still crucial in a way that isn't helped by either of the other approaches. The thing that can't be covered by a limited number of testers is the huge diversity of different environments found out in the wild.
Good of you to take the time to reply Chris, so easy to turn a blind eye I guess. I think that the massive step that was v7 to v8 caused you much more problems than you could ever have imagined. But its so easy to comment in a negative way especially with the benefit of hindsight.
Anyway, lets hope you as a company have learned from the experience and are better prepared for future releases.
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OK if it's not your computers it must be something you are trying to do on your site
Prehapse if you showed your url and specified the problem and asked for help instead of just moaning you may get assistance as something is obviously wrong at your end
Have you tried setting up a simple site to see if that works on your network at reasonable speed, maybe copy a hundred products to a new site, load in a test area on actinic or your own server and see how that performsChris Ashdown
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We have three full time testers in Actinic. (Incidentally none of them are Hungarian, contrary to rumours). These guys carry out around two weeks of solid regression testing on every new release of Catalog/Business, as well as testing every bug fix individually before that.
However, alpha and beta testing is still crucial in a way that isn't helped by either of the other approaches. The thing that can't be covered by a limited number of testers is the huge diversity of different environments found out in the wild. If quite a few people simply download a new version, add a section and a product and upload the site, place an order and download it, then the worst "environmental" problems will be caught. If nobody does this, the problems will be found when the software goes on general release.
I guess that the benefits of alpha and beta testing are tenuous for individuals, but there are some. For people interested in the new features, they get an early peek and sometimes things can be adjusted in the light of feedback. People can also ensure that Actinic is likely to work in their own environment, and will upgrade their particular snapshot, as bugs reported back from external testing go straight into the development team, who are doing nothing but bug fixing at that point. Then there is the issue of expertise - poeple who are selling themselves as Actinic experts stay ahead of the game.
Take the PPP scenario - this should have been tested on several country codes, with all different shipping types, so you have a matrix for example
country - GB, USA, DE, ES
shipping - simple, weight, quantity, free
with 16 testing situations, a decent tester would test 16 and more, a simple user beta testing will only test what is revelant to them. Seemingly your inhouse testing only tested one or potentially 4 of these options.
Obviously, nobody has to take part, but for those of you who don't want to, I would ask that you don't discourage others. The more people that participate, the better off we will all be.
Personally I hate testing - so whilst i am very vociferous in my opinions re the situation I have no real desire to sit down and take every situation apart to ensure the product reaches the shelves in a satisfactory condition. I view this as being Actinic's responsibility. I have also indicated that I would not consider testing if i could not spend the time necessary to thoroughly test all scenarios, spending 15 minutes here and there, in my view is not adequate, importing a few client snapshots is not adequate either, I would want to take certain scenarions and rip the hell out of it. To so this would require serious time and commitment, so do I donate my time for free to Actinic or do I carry on doing paid for work for clients? If I wanted to spend my days testing I'd go out and get a job as a tester. I want to spend my time running my business and not constantly reporting bugs and sending in snapshots for support to fix.
Maybe you could release your testing documentation, or at least get it documented, then we could all see what scenarios are tested for and point out ommissions.
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