Ismail Patel

Re the #PostOfficeScandal - an IT perspective from me about large scale software development in 1999 - I used to build online banks… each development team had their own development server, for testing the teams code. Then we had integration servers, for testing when combined with other teams. Then the build teams took the code from the versioning repository (where all different versions of code were kept) as various builds were made. They then built it. We tested it again on their build server. It then went to the testing teams - regression tests and integration tests. After that, it went to user acceptance testing - another whole team. Then it was released to live. 3-4 weeks was the build to release time. That was what you were supposed to do if working properly. My understanding is that the Horizon system just had the code on the live servers, and developers could change things on the fly. That’s gross negligence right there. Now, had the errors been reported, if done properly, they would have been found and verified with automated tests in a week or so. Not difficult. Then the tests would have been added to an automated test suite, used in regression testing. Errors would not have reoccurred. But, it appears there was no formal process in place to manage this and the errors were denied. That’s gross negligence that is. Any other devs or testers want to comment on how piss poor the software engineering process must have been at the post office?