Examining the ongoing challenges of delivering high-quality, value-added ERP services in Higher Education.
Monday, September 1, 2014
It's starting to get real. Really real. 84 days real.
All eyes are on testing, training, and sign-off. The auditors (both internal and external) are here, which we know intellectually to be a good thing, but the word "audit" strikes fear into many. It is their job to seek evidence that all the right people are looking at all the right things. My job is to try to keep the ship on an even keel as the waters roil around us, winds shift, and sharks try to jump aboard. I'm especially skilled at shark-wrangling (should add that one to my resume).
Although testing has been happening throughout the project, we are taking a more traditional approach to testing than the agile rules might permit. There's a whole host of reasons for that, not the least of which is that this is our first major release, there are about a zillion moving parts, the system is subject to financial audit, we were in the process of "forming" and building up our agile maturity (so may have missed some things along the way). So we are only two weeks away from starting the first of four rounds of System Integration Testing or SIT.
[Aside: my project manager has told me that referring to it as "sit testing" drives her crazy, so I'm almost tempted to write it out as S.I.T. But that's three extra keystrokes...]
My favorite part of SIT in this project, though, is the mobile testing room we've had to create. Starved for space, and with training labs available only sporadically, we have a big box of spare laptops (mostly aging ones on their last legs) that we're going to truck around from room to room as a "pop-up" testing (or training) facility. Should be interesting!
Keep your fingers crossed for us!
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