Wheelchair test

After few years of managing software development teams, I realised that it is not easy to figure out when a particular project is done.  Especially if you are working with multiple teams, multiple departments, sometimes in different cities, complicated requirements, demanding clients and so on.  This is worse when your team members are lying, cheating crooks, who are delusional and paranoid that someone is going to discover what they have actually done.  (Just kidding.)  So a hapless manager can only do one thing.  Ask an independent testing team to create tests that the software must pass.  Clear and simple.  Pass or fail.  This works especially well if the testers are paranoid about missing a bug (a error in a software) and latch on to the developer like a crazy street dog until you fix the problem.

I assume all this is true when it comes to city administration.  Competing claims, lobbies, unwieldy unions, lying cheating crooks, whiny public, and so on.  How do we even know when the authorities are done building safe, clean footpaths?  What does clean and safe mean anyway ?  In fact, what does footpath mean ? 

Well, why not create a simple test and get a bunch of people, who will latch on to the city administrators until the footpath passes the test.  So here is my test for footpaths.

Assume you have an old person in your family.  Grandpa, grandma, annoying old uncle. He or she is really old and is wheelchair bound.  Now the test for the quality of your city’s footpath is that you should be able to push this old person’s wheelchair, with the old person in it of course, from any point in the city to any other point in the city.  Without the old person having to get out of the wheelchair.  Without you having to carry the wheelchair with the old person in it.  Without bystanders and you having to carry …   Ahhhh… My lawyers are working on this to get the words right and loopholes free !

There is a reason for the wheelchair being part of the test.  A person who can walk can also jump over holes and pot holes.  He can get off the footpath and get on with relative ease.  A wheelchair cannot. 

If you have seen the footpaths in Chennai you will realise that even a Olympic Decathlon champ would have difficulty staying on it.  The footpaths are build at heights that only superman can climb.  Even if you climb on a footpath, it lasts only for a few feet.  Because the footpath dips downs again, a sharp fall that is, in front of every house and shop’s entrance.  All this if you are lucky and the footpath is not obstructed by parked cars, autos, shops, gates, illegal constructions of all sorts.  Crap, crap and more crap, usually literally.

Hence the wheelchair.  If the wheelchair can roll smoothly, then you can walk, run or skip on the footpath, from point A to point B.

Now as for testers….  Why not ask old people groups ?  (Yes I realise old people are no longer called old people.  They are, I suppose, differently youthed people or something like that.)  But I figured when old people can actually walk on the streets, without the fear of being mowed down by an assorted variety of vehicular manslaughterites, especially because of my patented ‘Wheelchair Test’ idea, that would be respect enough.

When a road and its footpaths are built, or so claimed by the road and footpath czars, let the elderly unleash themselves on them.  Whip out the wheelchairs and run the test.  Count the number of old people and their wheelchair pushers in the test team.  Chalk out the routes.  A to B. B to C. C to Z.  Ready, set, go!  After the trip count the number of people in the team.  If no one is missing, the team did not have to get down from the sidewalk, etc. test passed.  Else failed.  Sue government.  Take authorities to court.  Picket the city corporation.  Repeat until success.

Wouldn’t that be an inspiring sight ?  Large groups of old people and their well wishers testing their footpath.  Also, no complicated physics, chemistry or mechanical and civil engineering to tell us whether the road and the footpath actually work.

(My apologies to the old people, for any perceived slight of their physical abilities.  Many of them are healthier than so called young people.  If this is the case, the young person can sit in the wheelchair and the old person can push it.  My test is flexible.)

Jokes aside, this would come handy whether the road is being built by the government or by private companies.  This could be part of the bidding process for road building contracts.  Old people association certified.  Like ISO 9000 certified.  The point is that private groups and associations should have more say in these matters.  Old people or not, consumers should have a choice.  Roads should be built by agencies who satisfy consumers’ demand.  If government agencies cannot do this, then let the private companies do it.  Reward private companies if they deliver.  Punish them if the fail.  When it comes to many things, including roads and sidewalks, pedestrians are not treated as tax paying consumers.  This must change.