RE: More genteel than "Sanity Checked"

[Stuart Burnfield <slb -at- westnet -dot- com -dot- au>]

I worked for a software company in a similar situation to yours. Their 
product ran on various flavours of UNIX. They had a few 'reference 
platforms' such as Solaris, HP/UX and AIX on which the product would be 
tested for each new release. I think they referred to this as 
certification--"Product 4.0 has been certified on Solaris 7.0 and 8.0 
(SPARC and Intel); HP/UX 9.0; and AIX 4.1 and 4.2." Other platforms 
would be certified on request.

Where a customer or potential customer was still running an old or 
obscure UNIX OS, it wasn't always feasible to provide a certified 
version of the product. In these cases they might be offered a near 
equivalent port on the understanding that we believed it should work but 
couldn't guarantee it because it wasn't certified.

The important thing is not thinking of a neat phrase to describe the 
level of testing, it's the level of support you're prepared to give. So 
I would want to be very sure that the customer understands this:

"The software has been through some basic tests but not the full test 
suite. We believe it should work but we can't guarantee it as we would 
for a certified version. If you encounter a problem we will investigate 
it on a 'best efforts' basis but can't guarantee to fix it."

'Sanity tested' or 'smoke tested' doesn't come close to describing this 
and I can't think of another short phrase that would. Just make sure 
both you and the customer have the same understanding of what is and 
isn't supported.

In the table of supported platforms and versions, I would categorise 
platforms as either Certified, Tested but not Certified, or Not 
Supported. Define each of these categories below the table.

Regards

Stuart

_________________________________________________________________________

From: Kevin McLauchlan:
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?
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