I quote a post from the NYC Roots site of today. Charles nails it. We are being used as test monkeys. Throw it up against the wall and see what sticks. The whole thing is sickening. _________________________________________________________________________ "One thing that has made it even easier for bad decision-makers to dump poorly developed software releases on the public like this is the preferred software development methodology now called Agile. While it can be decent if the project is managed well and it works great for web-based apps centrally hosted (SaaS), this also enables lazy, poor planner management to fly by the seat of their pants, figuring it out as they go along before dumping a half-baked, poorly researched software update. But, not to worry (says the incompetent management), we'll just come back after the fact with a series of many smaller releases (patches) to fix the mess (that they've created), fix what should have been right the first time before it ever went out the door to the public. In the old Waterfall development days, you had to do really good up-front planning, including nailing down the business requirements and doing expert analysis to develop a good software engineering design because once you launched into the software release development project, to go back and to rework mid-stream was very costly. This forced stakeholders and managers, basically held their feet to the fire, to get this right the first time around, forced them to make decisions and plan. It took a little longer to get the release out but if the project was managed right, including the QA work to make sure all the major bugs were found and fixed before general release, as well as some pilot or beta testing to get live end-user feedback to make the design was solid, functionality was good, etc. Using this feedback loop, any other needed changes were made as needed so when the release was launched, it was usually quite good. No development process is perfect but it all comes down to how well these things are researched, planned and then executed. This Ellis Island update is a prime example of people making decisions in a vacuum to drive an agenda (probably money-driven) and now using us, the end users, as their "test monkeys" to sort out all they should have gotten right the first time around. Get ready for what will likely be many months of a long series or smaller releases to "fix" things but it may never be as good as it was before. Just another classic example of the poor leadership making major decisions and weak, incompetent management running not only big companies that affect many peoples lives but the same thing in government too at all levels...where has the good, wise leadership gone? Who knows... -Charles Marshall"