Tuesday 3 March 2009

Even An Ophthalmologist Can See The Problem

My poor wife had a bloodshot swollen eye and headache so after a quick trip to the doctors we were sent off to the eye ward of a local hospital where they had just had a new patient management system installed
Not good timing ( if a bad eye can ever have good timing )

Overheard comments

"I can't scan and attach to email, it complains that the To field has to be filled in but wont let me"

"This patient doesn't show up on my list"
"Have you hit the Refresh button ?"
"What Refresh button ? All I had to do on my old computer was wiggle the mouse "

"I'll try booking you in on this PC whilst I wait for the application to load on mine
Oh, thats not working either, maybe this PC
Oh thats not working either "


Finally got to see the doctor who first of all had to check and update records ( gulp ) and apologised for the delay but they were trying to use the new system.
He gave a big sigh

" I wish they would test these programs before rolling them out... "

2 comments:

Michael Bolton http://www.developsense.com said...

Your doctor is misspeaking. He should be saying, "I wish they would fix these programs before rolling them out."

- His software may have been tested, but tested badly.

- His software may have been tested very well, but product management might not have listened.

- His software might have been tested very well, but product management might have listened and still declined to fix the problems.

- His software might be really inexpensive, to the point where the company believes that it can't afford testers.

- His software might have been tested really well, but not on his platform.

Etc., etc. From the outside, we don't know about the testing. We only know about the end of the chain. Pointing the finger at the tester is like blaming the waiter for food poisoning, just because the waiter had it last.

---Michael B.

Phil said...

but thats not such a good story...

Point taken though - and it was instructive to watch the doc at work, he didnt just look at the eye, he took lots of things into account and made a great diagnosis of the problem