We're moving our system to a new version of the software it's written in. Normally we'd have had the programmers pound away on the new software awhile, sent some email to the users telling them to look at it and then we would have gone live. This past summer our contract turned over and we got new managers. They're very big on procedures, standards and processes. It's not that I'm opposed to those things, but in the past there was never a lot of resources to devote to them because we've always been busy enough collecting data, cleaning it up and publishing it.
With all the new suits wandering around spouting off high sounding language about processes and procedures my group put a little more work into our test plan. We made lists and filled up spreadsheets with dates and check marks verifying that we'd checked things out. Then, in a grand gesture we scheduled a "testing party" for all the users to get onto the new software and try it out. Well, first thing that happened was the server ran out of space and crashed.
I've always thought it would be fun to crash a server, and I was right. Some people would have been unhappy their test failed so miserably. My feeling was elaton that it didn't fail in a small way! It was failure in a big way. It turns out that the system administrator hadn't updated the resources settings, as we had suggested in our preliminary testing. So we'll be rescheduling the party and buying more M&M's to give to our users when they're done. Until then I've got a silly smile on my face at the thought of my big day.
