Starting Quality Assurance – Part 7

Out of ideas

What happens if you are out of ideas of what or how to improve?

Not surprisingly this has been considered by some of the pioneers of Quality Assurance.  They understood that there was a limit to the number of ideas that one person or a group could generate.  Even though it was possible to identify the problems, solutions might not be obvious.  After all, if there was an obvious solution, it would have been implemented already.

The recommendation was to change the composition of the group coming up with the solutions while retaining a minimum of continuity.  One recommendation was for everyone but the idea recorder to change.  The thought was that the idea recorder would know what had been considered (retaining the history) but might not have a vested interested in either supporting or denigrating any of the existing or new ideas.    The change needs to be done before the group becomes entrenched and before it loses momentum.

There is nothing to prevent people coming back in a few years with new solutions to new problems (or suggesting them to the new group once they have been outside for a while).  Experience always helps.

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Starting Quality Assurance – Part 6

Have we been successful?

Last time we gathered some statistics based on the new process once it had settled down. Now we need to compare the new results with the baseline from before the changes were made. If the results have improved, then we keep the change we made. If things have not improved then we need to back out the change and measure again.

Once we have everything either at the same level as the baseline or improved, then we can embark on the next round of improvements using the same process.

Two things that can cause problems:
1. Sometimes the changes are interrelated. This will require research and a method of disentangling the impacts of the changes. Otherwise we may end up undoing the wrong change and find ourselves bouncing back and forth with no long term improvement.
2. We have to watch for noise in the system or special items that cause the measurements to be inconsistent. No two measurements will be identical and there will be some variation at some level. This has to be ignored or the measurements taken over a long enough time period to even out any variations due to noise in the system. The other item that has to be watched is some special item like a large project or a freeze on development that will cause either the baseline or the new measurements to be inaccurate. Either an adjustment will have to be made or the measurements excluded from the calculation.

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Starting Quality Assurance – Part 5

Last time we gathered some baseline statistics.  These need to be recorded and retained somewhere.  Now we want to make some changes.  We may want to pause the measurements while we make the changes since they will not be accurate.

Based on some of the statistics we gathered last time.

1. Is the process taking too long? Look for parts of the process that are delayed (waiting for inputs or resources) or repeated and resolve the issue.
2. Is the process being repeated with the same inputs because of failures? Complete a root cause analysis of why the inputs are wrong and fix the upstream process.
3. Is there a long delay in the middle while external resources are assembled or contacted? Determine if better coordination with external departments would help or consider training internal resources to do the task.
4. Are computer resources maxing out during the process? Enlist an expert in performance to determine the exact cause of the resources maxing out.  Which tasks are taking all the resources?  Do we need more CPU/Memory or do we need to fix something in the program that may be searching too many records(for example).

Once the changes above have been implemented and have had a chance to take effect, re-enable the statistics gathering with the same set of measurements being recorded.

Next blog: Have we been successful?

Test Leader or Manager with concerns? Consider the Test Managers Conference.
NVP Quality Assurance Services
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Book a Meeting with NVP
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Photos by Chandan Chaurasia on Unsplash and Andrew Measham on Unsplash