RE: More genteel than "Sanity Checked"

[Kevin McLauchlan <kmclauchlan -at- safenet-inc -dot- com>]

Hmm.  I think that I did not convey the flavor...

Let's say that the product is hardware and its associated software (drivers,
api, tools/utilities, etc.) and firmware.

Let's further say that it is meant to run with several operating systems
(and sub-species thereof).

Let's say that earlier versions have supported several versions of Solaris.
Let's say that a couple of years ago we started compiling for Solaris on
Solaris 8, allowing us to support Solaris 8, 9, and 10... all of which get
thoroughly tested (along with all the other platforms) at each release.

Let's further say that hardly anybody (among our customers) still uses
Solaris 8, so we dropped formal support for it, a release or two ago.

Let's say that, a few days before release, a customer spoke up thusly:
"Well, we do have a few old Solaris 8 boxes in our deployed universe, and we
really do want to roll out your new release, across the board - we'd hate to
have to support multiple versions of your product throughout our
organization if we can avoid that. Can we run your new version on the
Solaris 8 boxes until we get around to upgrading them?"  
We said "Sure!  We're quite confident - we'll just do a quick check of the
highlights, then we'll support it on a best-efforts basis. Are you ok with
it not being put through the full wringer like the rest of the offering?"

Now, in the table of supported platforms and versions, that should appear
as...???  

See what I mean?  We want neither to shout it from the rooftops, nor to hide
anything, but we do want to make a distinction.

Does anybody work in an industry where you routinely show product being
qualified in various circumstances and configurations as a range of levels
of "supported" rather than just black'n'white "supported" or "not supported"
and nothing in between?

There's probably a whole language for this that I haven't accessed.

Kevin

> -----Original Message-----
> From: neilson -at- windstream -dot- net [mailto:neilson -at- windstream -dot- net]
> Sent: Wednesday, May 30, 2007 12:28
> To: John Posada; Kevin McLauchlan; 'techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com'
> Subject: Re: More genteel than "Sanity Checked"
> 
> Yeah, smoke test--the computer runs on smoke, and if the smoke
> escapes, it stops working. (I've seen it happen!)
> 
> I prefer sanity test. If I, myself, am to run the test
> I'll jokingly refer to it as an insanity test. If you
> actually were looking for a euphemism, you could say,
> "We're going to need an early test of this design, just
> to make sure we are really on track."
> -Peter Neilson
> 
> 
> Posada proposed:
> > Personally, I wouldn't change it, it is known to mean something
> > specific. However, maybe "smoke test"?
> 
> McLauchlan inquired:
> > > Anybody got any suggestions for a more politically-correct phrase
> > > than "Sanity checked" or "Sanity tested"?


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