I have decided to sign up with Sky for their TV, broadband and phone package. This is mostly because I’m paying about as much for broadband and calls (mostly line rental actually) as Sky’s whole package. The Sky+ box really seals the deal though: no more trying to catch up with TV on BBC’s iPlayer (buffering……….) or having to muck about with DVD recorders, etc.

I wanted to enquire about what happened with line rental. The website seemed to handwave this detail, but you can’t just not explain an £11-£12/month charge or assume it’s a given. There appeared to be no contact number for them either, so I eventually got through to their sales dept via their SkyTalk (telephony services) number. Having said that their Dunfermline call centre handled the entire signup process very efficiently and courteously so full marks there.

I even have an installation appointment on a Sunday morning. That’s service.

So the automated signup/transfer process has now kicked in. This is where they fall down on detail.

Received a text this morning: “Your Sky Broadband will be activated on 13/01/2010.” Sorry, that’s impossible without me giving you the MAC key from my current broadband provider. There seems to be no mechanism by which I can send them this essential information. Maybe there’ll be a way via the member’s area on the website (MySky)? I got a confirmation email from them after signing up over the phone. Yep, the email has my username but no mention of a password! Maybe I gave them a password over the phone? Maybe it’s a randomised one you get when an account is created? No idea and they don’t hint at what’s going on.

Let’s try signing up without a password (you never know). Nope, can’t do that. OK, I’ll click the “Forgot password?” link even though I’ve not forgotten it; I’ve just never been told.

Email received with password which I can sign in with. Right, we’re moving again…

There’s no indication from the broadband setup progress page about what to do when migrating. Users this applies to who aren’t aware of this (assuming they’ve got this far) will get delayed because what they should be doing is contacting their current provider for their MAC key. A search through their help system does reveal the right page which does explain things clearly, but you have to know to look for it.

Moral: Join up your customer journeys so they are seamless. It’s no use having helpful staff on the phone if you then fall at the first few hurdles on the website.

Extra Moral: If you’re stopping your line, there’s no migration process (hence the redactions above). It magically works from the changeover point, which is a vast improvement on the old 7-10 day lead time for broadband activation.

How SQLite Is Tested is an extremely detailed account of how the team behind the world’s most popular embedded database verify its robustness.

It’s worth at least a skim read to see what they do. Some things jump out:

• Code required to comprehensively check other code is necessarily significantly larger and more complex than that which it’s testing. We already know that, but in SQLite’s case the testing code is 690 times larger than the source code.

• Regression testing must include specific checks for every bug ever reported, which are then used to show that the fixes hold for each release. Again, no surprises there, but the consequence is that this effort quickly snowballs into a lot of extra work and new releases take longer and longer to deliver.

• Static analysis has never proved useful (for them): not a single bug has been detected using this method. Even though this is mostly because their automated testing does such a thorough job it’s worth investigating how that might apply to your testing.

• They only achieved 100% branch coverage in August of this year. Clearly a high watermark for them but also a goal that takes a very long time to realise.