Thursday, March 18, 2010

The Business Edge

Business Edge is a decent little journal, comes out twice a month. I picked up a copy from a downtown office last week, liked what I saw, and decided to check their web site this morning.

Good. They have archives, so I can access back-issues.

I decide to search for a story in the current print edition, but crashed the system.

Being a techie I am always keen to let other techies know of problems before their management gets to hear about it. A quick phone call, and I discovered that the new web site went live today. I am, of course, the first caller and I bring bad tidings.

A quick email with an attachment, and they are on their own.

Sort of

I asked them to email me back when it was fixed, and I'd retest it for free.

It seems to me that no matter what your business is, no matter what your business is, no matter what your business is, if you have a web site, you'd be well-advised to be associated with a destructive-tester.

What is a Destructive-Tester?

You need a friendly colleague with a technical mind, the more experienced the better. Someone who has many memories of things that have tripped up other applications in the past.

When you make a significant change to your web site, you email the destructive tester with a simple message "Free lunch at The Montreal Deli if you can crash my site before 9 p.m. tonight".

If they don't find a problem, that doesn't mean that there's no problem, it just means that they haven't found a problem.

But if they do find a problem, you'll both be very happy.

I promise.

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