Downside of being the “guinea pig” for adopting the latest buzz words in verification !!!

Adopting the latest’s verification methods and trends is my hobby right from the year 2002 and I have been continuing this till date. Adoption includes adopting new feature in the tool/methodology or construct in a language to adopting a new method of verification which could potentially improve the productivity, results in finding more bugs and improve the maintenance of the test bench. The upside of this hobby is you keep yourself updated with new trends in the market and become the early bird in adopting a trend. Evaluating the down side of this hobby did not come to my mind till one of my friends put an insight into my mind, adopting all the marketing buzz words can become fatal.

His words of wisdom made me rewind my thoughts on all the possible trends I tried to adopt over years. Few common trends i observed in each of the adoption are as follows

1) New code development is only 10% rest of the effort is making enhancements to the current environment. Tool vendors do not take this equation and end up facing gaps in the feature offering.

2) Being the first one to adopt a new verification trend, be prepared to face tool bugs, and sometimes even showstopper bugs.

3) Not all people have the practice of updating themselves to the latest trend and are more than happy to implement things with outdated technology. These people find it difficult to adapt to changes, we have to carry this type of people with us.

There have been feature or tools i have adopted early with became highly popular over years and some features i adopted early don’t even exist now.