Tuesday, November 13, 2007

FogBugz 6.0 - Devs' envy Testers' Pride

Well it is 02:02 at night and I am not in a mood to write something long here. So, would point you guys to a good demo of FogBugz. Seemed pretty awesome to me and I hope you would like it too. Believe me developers, you would strictly say a big NO to this software getting in the hands of the QA folks. Coz, it hits where it matters most - your performance and consistency.

The software keeps track of timelines you have skipped and other small stuffs which impact your consistency and reliability in solving bugs/issues. It is perhaps a thousand times better than Clarify which I have seen people using.

If something appeals to me most, it is the usage of Thin Client (of course something which works on Firefox without giving JavaScript issues and which uses Web 2.0 features). You have collaborative tools which spurs free interaction between Dev and QA.

I have only seen the demo, so I am not sure if this feature is present in 6.0 - I would have liked to see a quick draft form of a bug saved to a QA profile without getting filed right away. Many a times, the tester keeps a bug for further verification after he has encountered it for the first time. This feature should be included - though there are both pros and cons attached to it for the obvious reasons - the management (you figure it out yourself why).

The Demo URL is here

Just to add more interest - fogcreek is the one associated with Joel Spolsky who writes the famous blog http://joelonsoftware.com/.

This is part of an effort am putting in now-a-days to correct the process of writing code and implementing projects/designs efficiently. Good process comes through practice and awareness. In the beginning I used to always skip it. But slowly as I built the framework, it does not take much time of mine. Using open source software frameworks is the first step in this direction ( ! FogBugz ). Gone are those times when we had time to rewrite something twice. You write something today - and that remains forever!

There are some steps one should use before writing even a single line of code. Along with OO design, keep in mind Version Control, Memory Management, Code Profiling, Code Documentation etc. I would write an article when I get some more time highlighting these aspects and how they help you to bring clarity and integrity to the overall project. You may not configure them right away, but keeping space for them in your overall project design helps in the long run.

And remember - never reinvent the wheel unless you have been asked to do so. Always build on the top of existing blocks (reusing efficiently) until : you hit the Great Wall of Performance Issues.

hmmm ... the glass finally goes empty ... sadly it was cranberry juice all the way.

2 comments:

Pritesh Jain said...

Nice one dude. That estimation part was interesting. :)

And by the way, why are you drinking cranberry juice???

Unknown said...

well .. for the cranberry part - I had bought in a gallon of cranberry juice to try out (Apart from the breezer courtesy medikeri, had never known what cranberry tastes like).

The sad part is that it tastes bad in the beginning, but then when u sip it for some time - u get used to that berry flavor. So, got hooked on to it for couple of hours - when I finally went to sleep, I had already drunk almost half a gallon :)

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