Unless You Really Want to Look Like a Fool, Don't Save on Business Analysis

I have just heard Tom MacDonald's news report "Philly bike share glitch creating hassle for riders looking to upgrade" on the radio.

According to the report, Indego, a public bicycle sharing system in Philadelphia, offers two membership plans: you can "buy a monthly Indego30 membership at $15 that gives you unlimited one-hour-rides or pick the $10 per-year IndegoFlex membership and pay $4 for each trip."

But you cannot change your plan!

A Classic Example of "Broken As Designed"

This is an extremely annoying "feature" I keep stumbling upon in all kinds of software, be it customer-facing or "internal" business applications. I have been seeing this for years (if not decades) now, and it doesn't seem to be going away.

Imagine a web site that sells tours (just an easy to understand example). On a page, you see two dependent drop-down lists: one with continents and the other with countries (again, this is just an easy to understand example). Say, you select "Europe" from the first drop-down list and "Albania" from the second. The page refreshes and displays something like "Your search returned no results". You keep trying, and -- after 50+ attempts -- it turns out that the site only offers tours that begin in Germany (DE), Spain (ES), and Italy (IT). The other 50 or so European countries on the second drop-down list are there for absolutely no reason (except to annoy users). Sounds familiar, doesn't it?

When Marketing Budgets Hugely Exceed Those of QA: Thoughts Triggered by Yet Another Bug-Ridden Applicant Tracking System

If advertisers spent the same amount of money on improving their products 

as they do on advertising, they wouldn't have to advertise them.

Will Rogers

Around 2008, I became interested in Applicant Tracking Systems or, rather, what I thought back then an ATS should do and how it should do it. I even toyed with the idea of developing my own, but the interest must have been not strong enough for this idea to go beyond a modest in-house working prototype used to train students. I am still interested in this type of software applications, which now manifests itself mostly in what I call a recurring irresistible itch to find bugs in them (Once a Software Tester, Always a Software Tester). So, here is one for your... amusement.



Let's say you are an employer using an ATS from a reputable SaaS (software as a service) provider.

A job seeker visits your web site, goes to its career section and from there is taken to your ATS.

Note: Technically, it isn't really your ATS since you just "rent" a "slice" on a multi-tenant ATS provided by a SaaS vendor. The applicant may or may not be aware of the fact that he/she is using third-party software, which depends, among other things, on how tightly the ATS is integrated into your web site and how familiar with this type of systems he/she is.

The candidate registers, begins the job application submission process and, a few minutes later, sees something like this:

Screenshot 1 (click to enlarge)

In case you didn't get it, let me show you another one. The screenshot below is from the site of another company, but the ATS SaaS provider and the bug are the same (pay attention to where the red arrows are pointing):

Screenshot 2 (click to enlarge)

IT-Averse Senior Management? There's a Workaround for That

Last week, I was talking to someone, and - totally unexpectedly - two situations I had completely forgotten about resurfaced in my memory.


Situation #1

Quite a few years ago.

I am sitting in the office of an old friend of mine, who owns and runs a successful business. His company is larger than what in Europe they call a "medium-sized enterprise", but not huge. As a person, he is, quite possibly, the nicest businessman I've ever met. You should see how courteous he is with the cleaning lady... but I digress...

So, we are sitting in his office chatting about his business. He is telling me about some of his challenges, and I am throwing ideas (naturally, the IT kind) back at him - just to keep the conversation going. Even though I am careful enough not to get too technical, I can tell by the look on his face that he does not understand much of what I am saying. Then, looking a little embarrassed, he confesses that all of it is totally over his head, that he "hardly knows anything about computers", and that he only occasionally uses his "obscenely expensive, but mostly useless, laptop to send personal e-mails".

As tactfully as I only can, I inquire if this (I can barely stop myself from using the word "disability") complicates his professional life. "Not at all," he replies cheerfully. "At work, I have a girl for that," he adds pointing at the door behind which is the office of his administrative assistant.

This was before AMC's Mad Men. Otherwise, I would have thought I was at Sterling Cooper.

Image from The Watcher, a Chicago Tribune TV blog by Maureen Ryan

Image from AMC Blogs

Note: In order to be completely objective, I have to explain that, in the country where this conversation took place, the word "girl", although not entirely appropriate in workplace context, did not sound as terribly politically incorrect as it would have in the U.S.

Thank God, These Guys Are Not Surgeons

I don't spend much time on social networking sites, including LinkedIn, but, whenever I visit them, within the first couple of minutes, I always stumble on some bugs. Here is one I found today on LinkedIn (in order to actually see what's going on, watch the video in HD and full screen; it's a raw screen recording):


If you are familiar with how LinkedIn works, the video should be self-explanatory. If it isn't, continue reading.

Unless You Really Want to Look Like a Fool, Don't Save on Software Testing

From time to time, I just can't resist the temptation to do some ad hoc testing of business web applications I run into on the Internet. I've been doing it for years off and on (no penetration or any other disruptive testing, of course), and, although I don't keep statistics, my subjective feeling is that web apps have gotten much buggier lately. What's even worse is that the nature of the bugs I come across these days makes me wonder whether whoever is in charge of those applications just slaps them together as quickly as possible and puts them in production without any testing at all.

If you think I am exaggerating, let me give you an example.

More Terror Watch List Glitches?!

Shortly after I wrote Terror Watch List Glitches, more disturbing reports about problems with "terror-watch-list"-related systems started popping up. Most were saying that the expected upgrades (worth half-billion dollars!) might not correct the problems and might even create new ones. All the fuss seemed to be about "project RAILHEAD", which is supposed to replace Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (TIDE).

I refrained from publishing this post the very next day. There were tons of articles that simply amounted to a bunch of snippets from a congressional memo slapped together, so I decided not to add my voice to the general noise. Instead, I took some time to learn more about TIDE and RAILHEAD, as well as to analyze those claims from a purely technical perspective, leaving out the politics.

Terror Watch List Glitches

A few days ago, CNN showed yet another Drew Griffin's report about "terror watch list" glitches^[1] (UPDATE: the original video seems to be not available anymore, but the script is still there; also, there is a copy on YouTube - WARNING: there is some wacky message appended at the end of the video, but the clip itself does not appear to have been altered).

Let politicians argue about who is to blame for this mess. I am going to focus exclusively on its technical aspects the way I understand them. Of course, it is not easy to tell how a system works and what may be wrong with it when all technical details are classified. Still, based on the information from public sources, I am going to try to answer the following questions:

• How does a law-abiding citizen get on the no-fly list?
• Why is it impossible to get removed from it?
• Why is it so easy to find ways around the no-fly list?
• Is it going to get any better?