Supported - what does that mean?

I had a friend who would install anything on his computer. "What they say is supported doesn't really mean anything," he insisted. "I can make it work." (Come to think of it, my friend and his computer were a lot like the guys in high school whose cars were usually in pieces in my driveway...)

What brought him to mind were the questions we've gotten on whether DPM supports this operating system or that configuration. Contrasting customers' concern with supportability and the cavalier approach of "I can make it work" led me to explore exactly what it does mean that something is supported and what goes into that decision.

What supported means is the simpler question: it means that it works, we made sure it will work, and we take responsibility for making it work. So unsupported means it may not work and we can't take responsibility for making it work. Supported and unsupported are about our agreement with our customers.

So how does something make it to the Supported list? That's where it gets a bit more complex. To begin, think about the array of available hardware, operating system, and software configurations. Obviously, that has to be narrowed down.

The technical aspect can rule out a number of the possibilities, such as an operating system that doesn't have the capabilities that the software requires. Market analysis provides a lot of information -- what products are people buying? What are our target audiences using? For example, we didn't invest in making the DPM end-user recovery feature support Windows 95 clients because that just wasn't an operating system that most of our target customers are using.

The load of determining supportability falls on Test. Testing is huge. Automated testing, manual testing, stress testing, scenario testing -- and should something need to be fixed, it can mean a reset that starts every test all over again. And again. Just to give you an idea of the impact on resources, a final test pass on DPM required 50 people for two weeks. The smaller test pass of DPM with R2 took five people two weeks, and that was with 80% of the test cases automated.

Thus, it isn't inexpensive or quick or easy, coming up with that final Supported list. And that information, including system requirements, should not be disregarded. So why is it in the smallest font and tucked away in an unimportant location on the boxes??

For some interesting reading on software testing:

• Shipping with bugs
• Testing complex software
• Just how well is your software being tested anyway?

Comments

• Anonymous
  December 02, 2005
  When purchasing a new car, the dealer is only responsible for "The Car" -- the dealer does NOT provide free driving training & instruction, free travel plans, free car washes, free upgrades to next year's features, free insurance, or free gas.
  
  Software manufactures not only support the installation and basic support of their software; but also must provide detailed support on HOW to use the software (free driver's training), WHEN to use the software (free travel plans), ONLINE TOOLS (free car wash), ONLINE UPDATES (free upgrades), SUPPORT when "anything" goes wrong (free insurance), and supported FOREVER! (free gas).
  
  Sounds fair :-)