When you role out a new system or are testing new software you need to have a testing phase. It's critical to shake out the bugs, but to also receive feedback on performance and features. Mitch Kapor did this and his comments are more indepth than I expected.

Mitch Kapor is the founder of Lotus, the folks who brought you Lotus 123. Mitch Kapor is a smart guy and he's embraced open source. His latest company is building the next generation personal information manager called Chandler. This personal information manager will be open source.

Mitch Kapor is a hands on guy and I was amazed at the level of detail concerning his testing. When you look at his notes on the testing he's using Chandler in a real world environment and providing feedback. The key to this is he's being brutally honest.

Many times we have a sense of politeness that doesn't allows us to offer frank feedback. It's important to the process.

When testing a new system here are the top three things you can do to make it a better experience:

• Be frank. Be honest. Don't concern yourself with hurting the feelings of those who have created or installed the system. Yes, they'll be proud of the ownership extended to creating or installing the system, but you cannot allow yourself to hold back. We recently developed a departmental level status report system and one of the reasons it turned out so well is that all of our team members were frank. Notice 
• Be detailed. If you experience and issue be sure to detail the circumstances surrounding that issue. What were you doing at the time? What happened? What was the exact error message?
• Explain your expectations. If a feature doesn't work as you expected, either in terms of output or the time it takes to happen, make sure you voice this.

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