Barker: OK. Have we finished all the testing?
Firkin: Yes Sire. We've completed all unit testing, integration testing and User Acceptance Testing cycles.
Lucas: You mean you've read the proofs?
Firkin: Yes, Sire.
Lucas: And are there any bugs?
Firkin. Yes.
Barker: Any show-stoppers?
Firkin: Well, I've got the list here. Can we go through them? Firstly - there appear to be a number of references to unicorns. Shouldn't that be rhinoceroses?
Barker: Probably. But that's no more than a cosmetic bug isn't it? Does it affect any functionality?
Firkin: No, Sire. The unicorns are merely for descriptive purposes. At no point do they do anything that depends on them being unicorns, where a rhino might have a different effect on behaviour.
Lucas: OK. What's next?
Firkin: Well, you might regard this as more about detail rather than actual functionality but... isn't the language a bit archaic? I mean, this is 1631, after all. We're not all Lollards.
Barker: Have you actually read the "Tone of Voice" document, Firkin? It's supposed to sound archaic. This is God's word. It's not meant to be contemporary.
Firkin: OK. Right. The first chapter of Genesis appears to describe the world being created in just six days.
Lucas: And your point is?
Firkin: Well, it's a bit unlikely, isn't it? It looks a lot more than 6,000 years old to me.
Barker: Tell you what, we'll skip quickly past, pretending you didn't say that. Anything else?
Firkin: The Magnificat seems to imply that rich people will be in trouble and God loves the weak and powerless. Now I know that's what it says in the spec, but are we sure that the original requirements were right?
Lucas: I reckon you've got a good point there. But King Charles wants this Bible to ship today. So is it a cast-iron, drop-dead showstopper? What do you think, Barker?
Barker: I reckon we'll live with it. It may make no sense to us, but it's what the Sponsor requested. And it's much the same in Revelation, so the user experience should be consistent, at least. We'll iron it out in Bible 1665, the next release, if need be. Anything else, Firkin?
Firkin: Well, just the one. It's a missing word in Exodus...
Lucas: An important word? "Moses", or "God" or something?
Firkin: Not like that, no. Just a little word. "Not".
Barker: Well, we'll go with it, I reckon. The presses are waiting, we'll just hit the deadline - and if you start putting words in who knows if we need repagination? I vote "Go'. Lucas?
Lucas: "Go".
Firkin: You're the bosses. I'll tell the boys we're going live.
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| "The Wicked Bible" |
I've been to many of these meetings for agile development and it's nice to know that nothing much has changed in the last 400ish years.
ReplyDeleteThe mock-ups for the first 2 chapters must have been some rush job and that UX designer definitely needs to be fired.
ReplyDelete