Complete the Assessment
Assuming the second round of questions provides complete information, it is time to synthesize the information and start the assessment process identifying any gaps, risks (both business and technical) and guidance on how to solve them with minimal impact on the business. Expect this process to go through many drafts (especially for a large company) while competing viewpoints on what is critical and how it can be solved are debated.
Schedule a no-charge one hour consultation with a senior Quality Assurance consultant for an initial assessment/problem solving session.
NVP Software Solutions
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Second round of interviews. Generally assessments require a second round of interviews (and sometimes more). However, before embarking on the second round, it is critical that the first round be fully analyzed and any new questions or clarifications that might be required are identified and added to the process. Information from the first round might drive new questions for some of the original list of people and clarifications of what was actually expressed in the first round. The second round must find out all the in-depth information to complete the assessment.
In last week’s post we asked the question “Where does it hurt?” or ‘What concerns you?”. Obviously we are going to get different answers to these questions depending on who you ask. If no answer is forthcoming, then there would be a question about the need for an Assessment. However, we are usually inundated with concerns and problems – some real and some imagined. As part of the interview we need to ensure that every concern is noted (no matter how trivial it may appear) and that everyone has a chance to state their issues. Answers to this question will probably drive a lot of the second round of interviews to ensure we get all sides of the problem. Some people may not consider some items to be issues until someone else mentions it.
In the last post on this topic we said we would look at the initial set of questions that might be posed to someone involved in an assessment. Obviously the initial set are intended to elicit the information on the person and where they belong in the organization and for what parts of the product they are responsible. These questions are self-evident. There could be red flags raised here if the person does not feel they are responsible for anything or have too much for which they are needed.
However, assuming that those questions go well, the next two may be crucial:
There will be little progress on an assessment without an understanding of basic system architecture. One of the first requests is for a system diagram so we can start putting names, titles and process questions beside each section. Two red flags may be raised here:
Our next blog on this topic will drill down to the initial set of questions.
Sometimes the most difficult thing in a Quality Assessment is the first step. While there are usually some obvious quality patterns and issues, it can be difficult to get a starting point. We always start with information gathering interviews with the client representative who requested the Assessment. Clearly they thought that there was benefit to be obtained from an Assessment and their reasoning and motivation is crucial to the subsequent success of the contract.
To many people, a Quality Assessment seems rather nebulous. How can one assess Quality in an organisation? A Quality Assessment looks at the Processes being used to develop or purchase and test software and compares them against industry best practices to see where improvements could be made. There are some existing standard models that can be used (TMMI for example) which provide lists of attributes and processes to compare. These can be modified to suit any particular situation and the assessment completed and mapped.
Next week, we will discuss some of the processes we follow to complete this assessment.
Lessons Learned: No one process suits every occasion and we need to be flexible in what is used to provide answers.