bagginsbill opened this issue on Feb 01, 2009 · 207 posts
bagginsbill posted Mon, 09 February 2009 at 12:10 AM
Quote - bill, thx fr the clarification on the alpha and beta. what do they call the version prior to the alpha -
e.g. the phase in which they were still entertaining suggestions in regard to replacing or
improving FFRender with various GUIs and new features?
That doesn't have such a standardized name, but it is most commonly called "requirements gathering" or "needs assessment" and it happens all the time, even if there is a current project going out the door.
Usually at the official beginning of a "next release" project, lots of people get in a room and argue for days about what features and functions are going to be in or out of this release. Depending on which PDP you follow (Product Development Process) you may call this Define, Definition, Project Definition, etc.
The Product Development team usually follows something like this (cleverly alliterative) sequence:
Define -> Design -> Develop -> Deploy
Where is Test in all that? There's no synonym for Test that begins with D. This is why most product development teams do very littlte testing. :)
But seriously, because Software "Developers" do the Develop step, they believe that testing is part of Deploy and has nothing to do with them. That's why a lot of software sucks ass.
Some will tell you that test is part of Deploy, but that's really Beta Testing. Alpha Test (and sometimes there is an official pre-Alpha testing phase) go before that. So the true sequence is:
Gather Requirements -> Define -> Design -> Develop -> Test -> Deploy
In my organization, Developers have to constantly develop tests along with there code, or I kick their asses. Unit tests, regressions tests, performance tests, smoke tests. All these, along wiht the program itself, go to QA as deliverables, i.e. the tangible outcome of the Develop phase.
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