Castles in the Clouds: The Irrelevance of Vertical Scales for Most Practical Concerns

摘要

I imagine our community of modern testing experts as PhD-level designers of the snap-together children's blocks known as Legos. We lovingly construct versatile pieces meant to cohere elegantly into castles and starships, with multistep instruction manuals detailing their appropriate use. And we sit back and shake our heads, as Lego users neglect our instructions and build, instead, nondescript multicolor towers and, maybe, an occasional car. We think we are selling castles and starships, but our product sells less for its intended purposes than its flexibility; its perceived utility exists in the eyes of beholders.