NVP Software Solutions

Category: Quality Assurance Consulting

  • Quality Assurance – Step 7

    Quality Assurance – Step 7

    You have done everything that you can think of internally and you have spoken to outside people and used their input to further improve. At this time, it may be necessary to put the initiative on the back burner and wait for issues to pop up. We generally would not suggest this since it is hard enough to get a Quality Initiative going once, let alone, restarting it a second time but if you cannot think of anything further to do, it may be worse to keep pushing on something rather than stop and wait for something obvious to appear.

    Do not anticipate that because the initiative has been approved once that it is immune from further questions until it is completed.

    #QA,#QualityAssurrance,#SoftwareTesting,#SoftwareTestingStrategy,#TASSQ,#NVP

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  • Quality Assurance – Step 3

    Quality Assurance – Step 3

    In our last post, we talked about how you would encounter resistance from some groups. If you have successfully navigated the issues, then the next problem that may set in is a loss of direction. The initial items to be improved are usually obvious and have been issues for years. However, after that it will take more effort to find things to improve either because they not be obvious or they may have been considered in the past and discarded as unobtainable. It is necessary to go back and revisit old items since the situation may have changed.

    One of the key considerations of Quality Assurance is to see how activities interrelate and whether a change in one can have beneficial impacts on many others.

    Do not anticipate that because the initiative has been approved once that it is immune from further questions until it is completed.

    .

    #QA,#QualityAssurrance,#SoftwareTesting,#SoftwareTestingStrategy,#TASSQ,#NVP

    @Neil Price-Jones

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  • Quality Assurance

    Quality Assurance

    During the past year, we gathered up some articles and LinkedIn posts indicating a desire to improve Quality Assurance. Most people seemed to feel that this needed to be a country lead initiative or at least a consortium of several large companies along with educational institutions. While that might be a laudable aim, it is unlikely to occur.


    Most governments have other things to do and a lack of understanding about quality. Large companies have other priorities and Quality Assurance is just one of many items that need to be addressed.

    This initiative will need to be lead by individuals who have a vested interest in Quality Assurance and a willingness to involve other parties in IT (almost everyone) who would benefit.

    We will be launching this in October.

    #QA,#QualityAssurrance,#SoftwareTesting,#SoftwareTestingStrategy,#TASSQ,#NVP

    @Neil Price-Jones

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  • Quality Assurance – Testing

    Quality Assurance – Testing

    We are continuing our series on quality assurance. We have deliberately left out the coding piece of this because that is the piece that is changing the most frequently and processes that we had in the past have been superseded considerably by the advent of AI and the ability to grab code from certain repositories.

    We’re still looking at the testing, however, from the point of view of process improvement, because not only is testing lagging somewhat behind in terms of. AI implementation but the insecurity around code developed by AI is leading to an increased emphasis on testing.

    So the processes revolving around testing are even more crucial than they were before. Ensuring that we are:

    1. testing what we should be
    2. not over testing
    3. having the confidence at the end to state that the release can go forward.

    This is definitely critical when you consider our two other posts which came out last month and two more this month about having confidence in your release delivery and ensuring that it can go ahead.

    #QA,#QualityAssurrance,#SoftwareTesting,#SoftwareTestingStrategy,#TASSQ,#NVP

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  • Does your Software Testing Pay – Part 3

    Does your Software Testing Pay – Part 3

    “Does your Software Testing Pay” is the question we posted. We then posted a simple calculation for a ROI.
    After we posted the second blog we had a couple of comments to the effect that concentrating on defects was a very narrow focus in terms of cost recovery and benefits. This was certainly a valid criticism; we had concentrated on something that could be answered and calculated without too much effort.

    Some of the suggestions that came back were as follows:

    1. Contributing to a better product using the information gleaned from testing
    2. Enhanced knowledge of the product for both testers and developers.
    3. Future design improvements.
    4. A better quality product.

    No doubt more items could be added to the above list

    Now we just need to cost them

    Since some of these are subjective benefits, it is suggested that they be documented and then all stakeholders can assign them to a value bucket (independently). As a starting point we can use an averaged value for each benefit and then convert that into a dollar value to determine the benefit.

    #QA,#QualityAssurrance,#SoftwareTesting,#SoftwareTestingStrategy,#TASSQ,#NVP

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  • Quality Assurance Centre of Excellence – Part 4

    Quality Assurance Centre of Excellence – Part 4

    Today we want to focus on the root cause analysis.

    Focused on Root Causes – This can be applied to both of the previous posts. When it comes to being proactive, the Quality Assurance CoE could look at Root Causes of potential issues and plan around them or else they could look at Root Causes from their analysis and work to understand and solve them. Regardless of which way this is dealt with, the problem could be solved at different levels. We could be looking at Root Causes for software development and deployment or we could be looking at root causes that impact the entire organization (structure, culture, management).

    There are two challenges that a Quality Assurance Specialist usually faces with respect to Root Cause Analysis:

    1. The Root Cause may be difficult to find.
    2. Once found, there may be resistance to fixing the Root Cause

    An example of the first occurs when someone is supplying information to another group and in the process of supplying it the information is manipulated or reformatted in some way. The manipulation adds in an error which is not obvious. The next group uses the erroneous data to make decisions. The error is not large enough to cause major problems but it has an impact further along. No one notices the problem until much later. This makes the Root Cause difficult to find and difficult to correct since no one is recognizing the initial error.

    The second is a much worse problem. The Root Cause has been identified and the solution created. Then there is resistance to making the required changes:

    • The problem may be outside your department.
    • Someone may have to admit they are wrong and have been wrong for years.
    • There may be costs attached to making the change and they will fall on someone else.

    All of the above can lead to resistance to the change.
    Next:  Process Focus

    #QA,#QualityAssurrance,#SoftwareTesting,#SoftwareTestingStrategy,#TASSQ,#NVP

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  • Quality Assurance Centre of Excellence

    Quality Assurance Centre of Excellence

    Recently we discussed a misconception about Quality Assurance. Judging from some of the feedback we received, the post struck a nerve. Many people talked about the how they had encountered a similar misconception and what could be done about it. Although education seems to be the answer, it is ongoing and can be frustrating from time-to-time. Does one just leave it alone when people make these comments (even if the one I heard was probably not entirely serious)? Does one attempt to correct the misconception? That usually means starting a long dialogue (monologue?) with sometimes frustrating results. Either people start to glaze over, have something pressing to do somewhere else, or else simply misunderstand what was said (wilfully at times).

    So with all that in mind, we are going to start into a series on what is a Quality Assurance Centre of Excellence. This is different from a Testing Centre of Excellence. A Testing Centre of Excellence had to have a delivery component. A delivery component for a Quality Assurance Centre of Excellence is going to be a little harder. This means that this is going to be slightly more of a challenge. We will work through the same hierarchy insofar as it applies to this situation but obviously the emphasis will be different.

    So, having started the plan for the plan which always reminds me of The Siphonaptera next week we will start into the real classifications.

    #QA,#QualityAssurrance,#SoftwareTesting,#SoftwareTestingStrategy,#TASSQ,#NVP

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  • Testing for System Integrators – Part 2

    Testing for System Integrators – Part 2

    Two days ago we asked two $10,000 dollar questions and this week we promised the possible answers. Unlike the questions, which are specific to the final client and the suppliers, the answers are more general and apply to both.

    1. The contracts state the following specifically about Quality Assurance and everyone is in agreement
    2. The contracts says nothing about it so far but we have Quality Assurance as a topic and the contract will not be finalised without this discussion
    3. The contracts says nothing about Quality Assurance so far but now that you have brought it up we will add it.
    4. There is something in the contracts about Quality Assurance and we can look it up for you (contracts are signed).
    5. There is nothing in the contracts (contracts are signed) and there is no intention of putting anything in the contracts about Quality Assurance
    6. We don’t know (but that is a good question)
    7. We don’t know (and we don’t care)

    Suffice to say the items in the above list have an obvious gradation from good to terrible in the order they are presented. If you get the first answer, you’re well on your way. If you get some of the middle answers you have some work to do, but you may be in time to effect some change. If you get the last few answers, you are in trouble!

    Next: What to do with the answers.

    #QA,#QualityAssurrance,#SoftwareTesting,#SoftwareTestingStrategy,#TASSQ,#NVP

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