Severity One outage - on a golf course??!!
Submitted by Erik Petersen on Sun, 06/12/2009 - 09:39.
acceptance testing | events | metaphors | usability testing
I never really realized the parallels between software development and golf course layout. Both have a technical component, and a reliance on usability. The Australian (Golf) Open moves from city to city each year, and has a hiccup every so often. This year they had a five hour outage.
How do you get an outage in golf? While not in the infamous class , this years competition was held at a cliff top course in Sydney overlooking the ocean. Spectacular but windy. A savage wind blowing balls the width of the green had players blowing par just with their putters. A 5.5 hour delay to play was called by which time the wind speed had halved. The outage confused the local players who said those conditions were typical and just “par for the course”. The greens were all very fast, 10.5 based on their stimpometer score, much higher than the 8 recommended by some players before the tournament started. While the golf club staff ignored the advice, they had tried to slow 4 of the faster holes. The rest of the tournament was played sucessfully in windy conditions that kept the flags taut but didn’t move the balls.
The event has had similar issues in other years, the most interesting being when a greenkeeper mistook a bird dropping for the hole marker and put the green on the side of a hill!