Four short links: 9 August 2016
Forecasting Deadlines, SQL Client, Concept Network, and Game QA Process
- Don’t Use Average to Forecast Deadlines — good advice on how not to use throughput to predict delivery dates. [P]rojects will rarely have a distribution where average, median, and standard deviation are identical. As the data becomes skewed, the average loses its ability to provide the best central location for the data because the data will drag it away from the typical value. As we don’t have information about the data distribution, it’s wrong to make a forecast based on an average.
- Selectron — GUI and command-line SQL client.
- ConceptNet — a semantic network containing a lot of things computers should know about the world, especially when understanding text written by people.
- Patch the Process — games often release massive day-one patches because the console QA process (and the timeline to ship discs) means the devs have fixed things for months after the version that was approved for sale. This post explains that source of lag in more detail, and should make automated testing folks twitch.
