|
PureBytes Links
Trading Reference Links
|
I have been following the progress of TradeStation 7 by reading the posts on
TradeStation World.
Through that forum, TradeStation is conducting the public quality assurance
testing and bug resolution in a transparent and open way that is helpful and
informative. Communications seem relatively good and progress seems to be
steady. Features such as additional intraday data for back testing are not
yet in place. It is possible that in some months the product may be in a
usable state.
It would have been better had TradeStation had not created confusion by
characterizing the commencement of what is clearly public alpha/beta testing
as the "release" of the software, which one would reasonably expect to mean
making available thoroughly tested, debugged, usable software with all
advertised features, especially considering the heavy marketing of
TradeStation 7.
It would have been better had TradeStation devoted more internal resources
to quality assurance testing prior to involving their customers in such
testing.
It is not clear that TradeStation has the resources or procedures in place
to do "regression testing" -- thorough exercise of the software after a set
of bug fixes to ensure that the bug fixes do not create new problems or
reintroduce old ones that were previously fixed. Some of the problems that
have been found by users would not have gotten past a thorough test suite,
leading me to guess that TradeStation internally either has no test suite or
has one that is not very thorough.
The art and science of software quality assurance is well developed and well
understood in some segments of the software industry. Arguably too stringent
a level of quality assurance procedures could be cost ineffective, but I
suspect that some degree of improvement in the perhaps not stringent enough
quality assurance procedures at TradeStation would have net benefit to the
fortunes of that company.
In any event, if one accepts the current activities for what they are, the
process TradeStation has put into place is a clear improvement over the past
in terms of transparency, accessibility, timeliness, thoroughness,
responsiveness, and level of commitment, and may result in a good product,
although stronger internal quality assurance procedures would significantly
strengthen the process and create a higher level of confidence in the
stability of the product and the likelihood that bug fixes will not create
additional problems.
|