NVP Software Solutions

Month: June 2015

  • Quality Assurance for Startups – Part 2

    In the last blog we discussed why Quality Assurance for Startups was appropriate despite it not being the first thing on startup leaders’ minds. This is understandable given the amount of other work that needs to be done just to get going as a new business.

    It would be pointless to introduce a full Starting-Quality-Assurance process in the beginning stages. The effort involved would detract from the other to-dos and could interfere with growth. With that said, we can introduce a limited Quality Assurance program during the startup stage that will benefit all without adversely impacting the growth of the organisation as follows:

    1. At the end of each week, take 15 minutes and review what has been done and how it is being done.
    2. At the end of each month, take 1 hour and review what has been done and how it is being done.
    3. In both cases, take brief notes and file them.
    4. At the completion of the one month meeting, consolidate the notes and divide them into groupings. For example: Development; Quality Control; Process; Customer Feedback: Recurrent Issues
    5. Look for items that might be costing you money; that are easy to correct and can be implemented immediately.
    6. Look for items that have a medium term to correct and may still be worthwhile
    7. The biggest items to look for are those that may not be easy or fast to correct but may have a big impact in the future if left unchanged.

    If the items fall into the easy category; make the changes now and implement going forward.

    If the items fall into the medium category; try to subdivide them into things that can be done immediately and implement some of those.

    If the items fall into the long-term or hard category; there may be a need to assess how much effort it will require to implement a change.

    We are going to tackle how to implement next week.

  • Quality Assurance for Startups

    Quality Assurance for Startups sounds like a bit of an oxymoron. Startup companies and leaders have enough on their mind without adding that ‘horribly slow and stodgy Quality Assurance Process’ to the mix.

    This concept is wrong for a number of reasons:

    1. Quality Assurance is never about being slow or bringing the process to a halt. It’s all about speeding up delivery of whatever you are supplying.
    2. Set up good processes at the start of your business and make improvements that have the biggest return, before bad or wasteful habits become entrenched.
    3. A startup needs to provide a product or service that ‘delights the final customer’. A product or service that falls short in some makes for a short-lived company.

    What does a startup need from Quality Assurance? Just enough to make the final deliverable delight the customer!

    So what should you have?:

    1. Processes that ensure feedback from the customers is received.
    2. Sufficient information about the way the deliverable was constructed so that feedback can be actioned.
    3. Assurance that the changes made will not impact existing functionality adversely.
    4. Consideration of how to implement future growth opportunities.

    Of the above list, the last two are the more important.

    We generally would consider the third point to be a form of regression testing and the earlier that is planned and implemented, the cheaper it is. However, it is often left (as we can personally testify) to a later release and the startup spends thousands of hours and a lot of funding retroactively forcing in regression testing. Minimal consideration of the possibility of needing this will SAVE A LOT later on.

    The fourth point above is slightly more difficult to apply since it requires some anticipation of future needs based on limited information. We will leave that one for next week.

  • Quality Assurance – Implementing Right the First Time

    The last three NVP Blogs have discussed Doing it Right the First Time. The last one addresses the issue of Implementing Right the First Time. This is the part that usually trips up most people. They know they want to implement this in their organization. They know how or they can refer to explanations that will suggest how. The problem comes when we try to actually implement the process.

    As is usual with almost any new initiative, we want to follow three precepts:

    1. Start small.
    2. Pick off the easy items first.
    3. Publish the successes.

    Taking these in order:

    Start small
    Start with something over which we have full control or a limited number of stakeholders. Do not start with a mission critical project with numerous stakeholders; that will not work.

    Pick off the easy items first
    A quick analysis will reveal some small and easy to fix items that can be corrected. Sometimes it can be as small as adding a field to a defect report that avoids an extra step further down in the process or removing a step like having Quality Control test a defect as it arrives from the customer before passing it to development and then testing it on the way back out. The second example might have had use at one point but no longer makes sense. A third and frequently easy place to look for improvements is in items that have been made redundant by technology changes. These can include printing items that are now easily stored online or even still testing installation disks for a hosted system.

    Publish the successes
    Even though this is third, it requires some upfront thought. We need to know the current situation and statistics before we can determine whether improvement has occurred. So even though this is the ‘last’ step it must be considered early.

    Rule 3: Take a step back; look objectively at your process; pick off a few items that can be improved; check the current situation; make the change and measure again.

    This is the first step to implementing Right the First Time or Quality Improvement in your organization. Next week; an anonymous example of How Not to be Right the First Time.

  • Quality Assurance – Benefits of Right the First Time

    In the last couple of weeks, we have been discussing the first two steps of Doing it Right the First Time. This week, we will take brief side trip to the Benefits of Right the First Time. A lot of groups stumble over this point because they cannot articulate this well. They seem to use Descartes (as sometimes translated) “I Think therefore I Am” to state that Quality Assurance is “Good because it is” and leave it at that. That argument, in the Quality Assurance case, is circular. One might argue that Descartes is also circular but that is not something we want to take up here.

    There is effort involved in “Getting it Right” and the question is whether it pays back later. We argue that is does using the following reasons:

    1. Having people actually concentrate on each step individually means that they will fully understand that particular piece.
    2. They can project all the possible consequences of that step.
    3. They can determine all the possible precursors that might impact that step.
    4. They can determine all the possible outcomes from that step.

    There are two major counter-arguments to the above. One we are already addressing here. The other can be addressed using the argument we have already stated.

    The first major counter-argument is the lack of time to do this type of analysis. Few people will deny the necessity of doing the analysis so this is only a question of timing and doing it earlier usually is beneficial in informing people.

    The second major counter-argument is that things will change before we are done so why spend the time on something that we will need to redo later. This argument misses the point of the process. The analysis carried out in this process identifies that possibility for change, anticipates what is going to happen, addresses it and moves to the solution.

    Step 3: Make sure we understand the benefits of this process so we can explain it at any time.