Theory-building and why employee churn is lethal to software companies
A myth, a plan, a canal.<p>I worked for a period in a consumer product OT shop. I was a consultant; not a 2nd gen. It&#x27;s not often you discover you have access to a quarter $mil of OT equipment just lyin&#x27; around as hot spares sitting in a lab down the hall; and it all talked to the hot spare L2 which we used for development.<p>Technically, I was working on the L2 system. But I needed to write test plans. When I showed up, they showed me &quot;the wall&quot; which was three ring binders (1&#x2F;2 to 1 inch thick?) of &quot;test plans&quot;. Each binder was a test plan. Yes.<p>Over the better part of a month I assembled enough stuff in the lab to run product &quot;end to end&quot; in the best environment we could simulate.<p>So, after meetings, I was able to write a test plan which referred to an SOP for some portion of its setup and then deviated (a &quot;variance&quot;) for the actual test. Tests took longer to execute, but a hell of a lot less time to write.<p>To set this up, I interviewed the actual line personnel. By the time my tour was done I had to schedule time in the lab because they were using it for training and general &quot;what if&quot; screwing around.