What is Ghetto Testing?

Dec 22

When I try to explain what the delinquent savants at todreamalife do to one of my tech colleagues, I tell them we do “ghetto testing in critical infrastructure”. But what does that mean?

why the term ‘ghetto’?

One of my brilliant consultants pointed out that the term “ghetto” could be considered discriminatory when used in the pejorative.

I want to be clear that in the context of this article, and the startup community, ghetto describes positive attributes that emerge from low-resource situations such as frugality, creativity, real-world data, scrappiness, skepticism, and the entrepreneurial spirit. (Think M.I.A. Paper Planes, K’Naan’s Waving Flag, or Macklemore’s Thrift Shop.)

Startups are a low-resource environment. And in this case, it works in their favor because they are forced into pragmatism. They are more likely to see the flaws in a project that a larger company could obscure with funding. They are less likely to waste time building a project before testing it.

The startup ideal is to test if something is valuable to the public without needing to spend several million dollars of someone else’s venture capital funds and to achieve early revenue based on market-utility which can only be proven… in the market.

What is ghetto testing?

Ghetto testing is the best way to build software. It’s a slang term for fast, frequent, iteration of small features. Entrepreneurs have found this practice helps bad projects fail quickly, good projects prove their worth early on and the user data tells you which is which.

The problem is, some industries like (i.e. medicine, aeronautics, defense, and energy) don’t have the infrastructure to iterate small projects, and have hard limits on testing software that could break.

Ghetto testing and lean development

The principles of lean software development are simple and well-accepted in tech. Popularized by Erik Reis in The Lean Startup in 2011 lean development is how most consumer software is built. Which is why we love our smartphones, wearables, and email.

In stark contrast is the software available in our organizations and workplaces. A representative sentiment quote is by Atul Gawande who said the New Yorker in 2018 “somehow we’ve reached a point where people in the medical profession actively, viscerally, volubly hate their computers.”

So why is our consumer software so great and the software in our most critical workplaces so bad?

Ghetto testing and breaking shit

When you build consumer software, it’s usually okay if it breaks at first. It’s totally acceptable and even desirable if your software breaks, if there are bugs, or if you do a really basic version. In fact, the companies that do the fastest and dirtiest builds are paradoxically the most successful. It turns out customers and clients are forgiving about their digital bubble popping, social media highlighting, and most techies don’t mind reporting a bug or two for a friend. (Hell, I give Squarespace free beta testing feedback all the time because I like ‘em.)

But in no way does this attitude (or probably my profanity) fly when you’re in a critical industry. In medicine, people actually die when you mess up. In aeronautics, your planes fall out of the sky. People get mad.

This is why “no one gets fired for buying IBM”. So consumer software gets better and better, while doctors are leaving their profession in droves because they hate their super-safe, completely-unusable software.

And ironically. doctors hating their jobs en masse is making the medical profession unsafe.

Ghetto testing in critical infrastructure

So how do we do lean development in critical infrastructures? How do we preserve the positive attributes of ghetto testing in a high-resource, high-security environment?

The answer is very carefully! With a little foresight, some creativity and a lot of negotiation most critical industries have use-cases where it is appropriate, ethical, and inexpensive to try something new. Usually, that’s because they have an intractable problem that no one can solve, the problem is costing them gazillions of dollars, or hurting people.

At todreamalife, we have what David Epstein calls Range, a lot of skills in a lot of different industries. This allows us to build simple integrated mockups for complex problems, and then gather informed feedback from more specialized domain experts. With good design, we can do lots of iteration prior to formal testing. When we do iterate, we have the skills to get iterative testing approved through formal channels. We also do formal research, popular science translation, and software mockups.

Over the years we’ve formed a large network of creative professionals who are embedded in their industry, capable of thinking outside of the box, and interested in partnering with responsible high-tech companies. This means a lot of matchmaking between high-tech companies and critical infrastructure openings for high-tech. This also means making sure project negotiations, risks, and pricing are clear and aboveboard.

Ghetto testing conclusion

The term ghetto testing is a deconstructed version of lean development. And we’re a little biased, but we think its the most fun version. We get to test out our crazy scientific ideas in fast, fun, and friendly collaborations with some of the coolest scientists in the world.

We also think that low-resource projects unlock the positive attributes of frugality, creativity, real-world data, scrappiness, skepticism, and the entrepreneurial spirit.

If you want us to make you a match, just nerd out about fun projects, or work with us please email info@todreamalife.com

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