Scott Hanselman has a good rant today about how software developers increasingly use their own customers to do quality-assurance (QA) testing:
Technology companies are outsourcing QA to the customer and we're doing it using frequent updates as an excuse.
This statement isn't specific to Apple, Google, Microsoft or any one organization. It's specific to ALL organizations. The App Store make it easy to update apps. Web Sites are even worse. How often have you been told "clear your cache" which is the 2015 equivalent to "did you turn it on and off again?"
I see folks misusing Scrum and using it as an excuse to be sloppy. They'll add lots of telemetry and use it as an excuse to avoid testing. The excitement and momentum around Unit Testing in the early 2000s has largely taken a back seat to renewed enthusiasm around Continuous Deployment.
But it's not just the fault of technology organizations, is it? It's also our fault - the users. We want it now and we like it beta.
It would be nice, of course, if shops made sure show-stopping bugs didn't make it to production. But otherwise I'm OK with the balance of new features and frequent updates. Things evolve.