Hi koha-devel, On the last Koha team meeting of March 20th, 2006, we discussed about the position INEO (me for instance) could officialy take on the project. Joshua and Paul proposed me to be Quality Assurance (QA) manager, and I personnaly accepted this role for a two months try. I've just asked my INEO managers for a formal validation. On IRC, the definition about QA manager was discussed, because everybody doesn't define it the same way. Paul said "responsible for heavy testing" and I answered I did not agree with this point of view, not in OSS model. thd asked what difference I made between open and closed source QA. Let's answer this question by mail, as requested by Russ. See details on IRC logs [1]. I first answer to the question "what difference I make between open and closed source QA", then I'll describe what is my vision of QA manager for an OSS project like Koha. QA, proprietay Vs OSS ===================== I've worked on the two sides of softwares : proprietary and OSS. I think I understand the advantages and drawbacks of each model, concerning QA. In a proprietary model, the software *must* be /stable/ when reaching customers. In my vision, /stable/ means: - without bug that may corrupt customers data - without blocking bug Consequently, a proprietary software vendor needs to have a QA team. This team assures the stability of releases. No right to mistakes because financial penalties will be requested by customers. OSS model is different because it *involves* customer on QA. This is a very important point in my opinion. An OSS project must provide efficient tools to communicate with core dev team. Customers/users are willing to propose patches. OSS model partially moves QA to customers. Not completely of course, and I'll describe muy vision of QA management later. I'm sure Koha developers have all read Eric Raymond essay "The Cathedral & the Bazaar" [2] (if not, I encourage the reading). In this essay, you can read the summarize of Linus's law : "Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.". Koha team will never have enough eyeballs, this is why customers must be involved in bug tracking, from notification to test & validation. Having worked nearly 3 years in a proprietary software company, I can assure you that QA is one of the most critical task, and very often underestimated since it costs a lot while not giving back money directly. QA team needs to grow at the same speed as development team output, and even more because complexity increases more than linearly. OSS offers a solution to assure software quality without costing a lot more. Indeed, the more customers, the more requested features, the more tests required. If customers are involved in QA process, the number of testers will increase the same as the number of features. My conclusion is that in OSS, QA dedicated team don't need to be as big as development team. My explanations are very theoretical, in the reality OSS vendors have to "release often, release early" [2] and involve their customer at an early stage of deployment, not only before production deployment. This is why HEAD builds, 3.0-RCx are necessary. I think some customers will accept to play the role of beta tester. I ask Paul, Joshua, Russ and other Koha services vendor to give their opinion. My QA manager vision on Koha ============================ I come to my vision of QA manager on Koha project. The most important of the QA manager is to know the content of the bug tracker: 1. being notified on every update 2. dispatch issue to developers (with developer authorization) 3. check that each issue is assigned/treated 4. reduce time between bug notification and its closure It is important that no bug remain a too long time unassigned/untreated. If this happens, customer won't feel useful to involve herself. A bug rapidly corrected with a efficient communication between reporter and developer will encourage customers to report bugs, thus improving Koha quality in the long run. An additionnal task of the QA manager is Bug Squashing Party (BSP) coordination. I need to be explained how Koha worked on this in the past. I'm waiting for your feedback. [1] http://tinyurl.com/n4234 [2] http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/cathedral-bazaar/ Cheers, -- Pierrick LE GALL INEO media system