Become an Early Adopter, No Thanks OR Why I Hate Products that Don’t Actually Work Yet
Photo by Museums Victoria - Driving a Schacht Motor Buggy, Melbourne, Victoria, circa 1908-1909 on Unsplash
What Happens When a Product is Released to the Public at Large
Here's the first thing that happens.
Well, actually, let me back up a few days, probably even weeks.
An important question must be answered:
How much quality can the public at large live without?
Wait, What, the Public Must Experience Lower Quality
Coming from a quality assurance background it pains me to say this, but yes. In order to deliver software products these types of choices must be made. Deliver a working product with many functioning features and some known deficiencies, or don't deliver at all. Often times the first choice is the best choice for both the product and the public.
But that's not our topic for today
So If I Know Products go to Market with Known Defects - Why don't I Like Early Versions of Products
Maybe it's just me, but I deal with the beta, and even alpha versions of products on a regular basis. This is fun, challenging work. It pushes you to do some of these awesome things:
- Analyze deep, challenging problems
- Work with people from multiple teams to get to the bottom of issues
- Sift the wheat from the chaff, meaning trying to avoid identifying false positives
- Bring an understanding of technical, business, and even organizational things together to find otherwise undiscoverable deficiencies in a product
- Advocate for changes when others may prefer to turn a blind eye
If Testing is Fun - Why don't I Like Early Versions of Products
While testing is challenging and fun, it's also work. By work I mean some of the following items:
- Creating extensive documentation to support every thought you have
- Letting every thought you formulate be questioned by multiple parties
- Being the bearer of bad news on a regular basis, which some recognize as essential and appreciate, but others don't always view in that light
- Creating detailed step-by-step plans for every thing I plan to do
- Documenting the outcome of everything I plan to do
- Having everything I planned to do reviewed and scrutinized by multiple parties
- All of this while working under very tight deadlines, which can, at times, make people a bit stressed out and thus cranky
If I Don't have to Provide those Details under those Deadlines at home - Why don't I Like Early Versions of Products
This may be just me, but perhaps it also applies to other folks with a quality assurance background, but I love the following aspects of my job:
- Reviewing a product and identifying problems and potential problems
- Watching and helping the team get to the bottom of the investigations that ensure
- Setting up working relationships and team processes that help to look for those types of problems earlier
I feel deeply that these things help teams build great products and I enjoy doing them.
The hard part comes when you want to turn off that mindset. It just doesn't work that well when I sit down with an awesome new app or program everyone is talking about.
So What's the Bottom Line on Why don't I Like Early Versions of Products
I enjoy great products and want to use them without worry and without that QA mindset lighting up like a 1000 lights in my brain. I like seeing great designs, implemented well. They make life easier and more enjoyable.
But I want to avoid products with beta and alpha version quality at home whenever possible:
- poor designs, implemented well
- good designs, implemented poorly
If I have to use products and programs with poor quality, I can learn to ignore some of the potholes, over time, but as a rule, I wait as long as I can to use software once it's deployed.