Ahh Janine..... :o)
The world is full of doubt!
Ok, it is, in my experience, better that developers create automated tests... providing they create them before the code ;).
I understand your initial paragraph, but forgive me for saying it, but you appear to be describing a company that has piss-poor management and lack-lustre employees....
If people want to deliberately avoid doing the job properly then there's not really much anyone can do about it. Methodology or not!
But..... it does emphasise why it would work better in an OS community... Peer Review. Theres more of it, more people and with differing goals.. i.e. not all the same guys in the same company, equally as bored ;)
Ok, I also disagree that its an OpenMSG specific benefit. We;re just developers like you. We;re not very formal, we don;t produce piles of pointless paper... and we don't deliver stuff we're not proud/motivated by.... I think in that respect we have a *lot* in common with the community.
I definately do not think things like this work in a 'do it if you like' fashion. It has to be mandatory, for there to be any net gain.
After all, you must remember that you can't work against human nature. Nobody wants to do more than they have to. If you make it voluntary, anyone who has made the effort will be hampered by those who haven't... and then no-one bothers...
Hence my earlier posting about why a Governance/Structure needs to be in place... but../...
I understand your point and have an alternative solution.
The core of the OpenACS is common to all, we all need it and its critical that this be quality stuff we can all rely on.
There's also a branch of the community that wants to experiment, try new things, get radical. Thats fine, but I don't want it in the commercial stuff I have to deliver....
So perhaps we have graded submissions... i.e. if you want to add certain stuff, you must provided tests for someone else to run..
If your more interested in runing up 'bleeding-edge' stuff, then that can be got from an 'untested submission' pool...
In reality the main objection to this kind of thing (i.e. automated testing) is usually more to do with the fact that people can't be arsed!!
I really sympathise with that as I'm about the laziest man on the planet, but even I accept you have to sacrifice to make gains (and beleive me OpenACS Acceptance TEesting teaches you that ;).
