Apple Inc. is overhauling how it tests software after a swarm of bugs marred the latest iPhone and iPad operating systems, according to people familiar with the shift.
I believe I had that.
The worst part is that anyone with any experience in these things knew testing was broken within Apple years ago. My first post on it with that tag was from 2015 (and it looks like I missed blogging about one of my favorite QA fails from that year). Worse, it wasn't limited to a single product. The QA fails were systemic.
Look, if I had a good idea testing was broken from outside of Apple over four years ago, why the heck couldn't they tell they needed to head off this disaster asap from inside the company?
The worst part is that this description from Bloomberg, if accurate, makes it sound like the push is for code-side fixes. I don't hear that they're going to hire quality QA engineers to better test -- manually and with automation -- those daily builds.
There's a push to make the daily builds testable, which they weren't before, but hiding unready code behind featuregates shows that Apple doesn't yet really understand code management or how continuous deployment is supposed to work.
Again, from Bloomberg:
Test software got so crammed with changes at different stages of development that the devices often became difficult to use. Because of this, some “testers would go days without a livable build, so they wouldn’t really have a handle on what’s working and not working,” the person said.
I feel for them. If this happens, QA should be given the power to say that all new development must stop and the current build needs fixing. In the world of Scrum, you don't get your points (aka "say you're done with your work") until it's tested and approved. Sounds like QA isn't getting the opportunity to say no at Apple. That's broken.
The truth is that QA is exceptionally undervalued as a whole in our industry. As this disaster shows, QA testers (and quality engineers) are very nearly literally worth their weight in gold. At 200 lbs, one's worth $4.7 million at today's gold prices. Not that far from the mark for Apple.