Saturday, January 17, 2009
Testing Should Not Be Simply a Lifecycle Phase
KM systems are often brought in via the classic waterfall design process, it is one of the oldest and most widely-used software development models. However, the big problem with waterfall design is capturing requirements completely and explicitly upfront. KM systems built this way tend to develop very high costs of change. Often, this is due to low investment in user research and user testing.
The result is that requirements documents are almost always flawed in scope and detail. You cannot rely on them to get everything right at the outset, so you cannot depend on the spec as you go in with the rest of the KM system lifecycle. Don't make the mistake of trying to 'test' quality into a KM system. Testing is not a stage. It should be an ongoing process managed by a highly effective team. If you don't build the highly effective team first, then you are at risk of simply passing down problems until they become the foundation of your system.
If good testing isn't applied at throughout the lifecycle, then the cost to fix problems in triage trying to discover the problem. Consider more agile techniques for KM systems that hope for a long and successful lifecycle.
The result is that requirements documents are almost always flawed in scope and detail. You cannot rely on them to get everything right at the outset, so you cannot depend on the spec as you go in with the rest of the KM system lifecycle. Don't make the mistake of trying to 'test' quality into a KM system. Testing is not a stage. It should be an ongoing process managed by a highly effective team. If you don't build the highly effective team first, then you are at risk of simply passing down problems until they become the foundation of your system.
If good testing isn't applied at throughout the lifecycle, then the cost to fix problems in triage trying to discover the problem. Consider more agile techniques for KM systems that hope for a long and successful lifecycle.
Labels: KM Tools
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