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.
Category: Process Improvement
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What is a Quality Assessment?
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.