NVP Software Solutions

Tag: Process Improvement

  • Communication in Testing and QA – Message, Audience, Transmission Method

    With all of the ‘communicating’ we do in today’s world, Communication in Testing and QA may seem like a redundant addition. The methods of communication available are endless, to the point, where the pendulum might start to swing the other way, towards a world that reduces the amount of communication we have in our lives. However, when it comes to software testing, quality assurance and quality control strong COMMUNICATION is the number one skill looked for in for software testers.

    We have already discussed WHY, HOW and WHAT to communicate in other blogs within this series and the final components to tackle are Message, Audience and Transmission. When sharing information and data, it is essential that you consider your specific message, who the intended audience is and the way in which you wish to transmit that information based on the previous criteria. Those who carefully consider and plan these components of communication get their views and insights heard and acted upon much more constructively than their counterparts who do not consider these three things.

    Start by thinking about the message you are trying to send? Is it advice, a warning, a compliment or technical information that increases the efficiency and success of your department? Whatever the message, clarify it and exactly what you are intending to convey. If you can do this in a few short sentences, you’re off to a good start. Your message should be short, concise and to the point. If there’s no point, there’s no point in wasting your time or the time of your audience.

    Speaking of audience, who exactly is your audience? You need to figure that out, because your audience may be the most critical piece to consider. Who are you trying to reach and under what conditions? There are many recipients for every message and specific knowledge of who those recipients and how they react is a determining factor in how successful your message will actually be.  People speak differently to their boss then they do to a peer, subordinate or close work-friend. You speak differently to your neighbour than you would to your spouse, children or relatives. Fully understanding your audience allows to you craft the content of your message in a way in which you think they would best receive the information being shared.

    When you have identified the message you are trying to send and the audience in which you are sending to, you can determine exactly how your piece of communication should be transmitted. How is it best to attract the attention of the intended Audience and get the Message we want across. We covered a number of these in an earlier blog.

    We also need to keep Marshall McLuhan in mind when considering this. ‘The medium is the message.‘

    Next Blog Series: Testing Centre of Excellence

  • Communication in Testing and QA – How to Communicate

    Communication in Testing and QA may seem pointless in today’s over-communicated world. We can use so many methods of communication that the point may seem more like how to stop sending or receiving so much information rather than the reverse. That is missing the point of this particular topic. Communication is listed as the number one skill required in testers.

    The second question in our series is how to communicate. Again, this may seem like an unimportant question when there are so many methods of communication. Actually it is more important than ever. With so many methods of communication how do we make sure our message stands out to the final recipient. Clearly marketers spend a lot of their time thinking about this question and experimenting with various methods to get the attention of their target audience. Equally obviously, some Quality Assurance or Quality Control communication is mandated by the tool that exists in the organisation or the process that has been determined. For example, defects (or whatever they are called in your organisation) are often put into a tool and communicated via a workflow. There is ‘little scope for the imagination‘ in that process. However, for every other piece of communication the question of How it is communicated is critical.

    For example:

    1. We want to convince a large group of people to follow a certain path and also solicit their feedback – personal presentations to small groups may be the most effective even if it is time consuming
    2. We want to demonstrate the superiority of one methodology over another – graphs and charts may be the most effective even though we may think the answer is obvious
    3. We want to tell everyone some good news – a newsletter or announcement via electronic communication may be best even if we want to tell people in person

    We have only really scratched the surface of types and possibilities here. There are thousands more.

    Final Blog of the Series: Communication in Testing – Message; Audience; and Transmission Method

    Next Blog Series: Testing Centre of Excellence

  • Communication in Testing and QA – What to Communicate

    Communication in Testing and QA may seem pointless in today’s over-communicated world. We can use so many methods of communication that the point may seem more like how to stop sending or receiving so much information rather than the reverse. That is missing the point of this particular topic. Communication is listed as the number one skill required in testers.

    The first question is what to communicate. Again, this may seem like an unimportant question when everyone has the ability to know everything. Actually it is more important than ever. With the rise in volume of communication (although not the quality) the need to filter out extraneous information and provide the relevant information and only the relevant information is more critical. It is trivially easy to incorporate lots of material into each communication and hit Reply All. The net end result is lots of information but little content.

    So the initial question that needs to be addressed is ‘What is the content of the message’. While many people know the content of their message, few take the time to think it through in detail. It is assumed that whatever content has been placed in the message (frequently without thought) is correct, sufficient and not too much.

    The content of the message is one of the three most important items:

    1. What does the person, with whom you are communicating, need to know?
    2. How should that information be presented?
    3. What will help them make a decision or act as we want them to based on what we send them?

    These are all pieces of the content that need to be considered just before hitting that Send button.

    Next Week: Communication in Testing – How
    Final Blog of the Series: Communication in Testing – Message; Audience; and Transmission Method

    Next Blog Series: Testing Centre of Excellence

  • Communication in Testing and QA

    Communication in Testing and QA may seem pointless in today’s over-communicated world. We can use so many methods of communication that the point may seem more like how to stop sending or receiving so much information rather than the reverse. That is missing the point of this particular topic. Communication is listed as the number one skill required in testers and only yesterday employers were lamenting an inability to find personnel with the following three characteristics:

    1. Experience
    2. Soft Skills (including communication)
    3. Technical skills

    We cannot necessarily do much directly about items 1 and 3 above but we can certainly look at the second one in a general context.

    Obviously we are trying to convey information and that information is intended to allow people to make decisions as a result of that information. In the case of testers:

    1. It may be a Go/No Go decision on whether to promote a release to production
    2. It may be a priority decision on fixing a defect
    3. It may be a decision on continuing testing a particular release or set of code
    4. It may be a decision on whether to include or exclude a certain feature
    • We need to communicate.
    • We need to make sure the message reaches the right person or people.
    • We need to make sure the message is provided in the correct format.
    • We need to make sure that the message leads to the correct decision.

    Of those four points, the last one is the most important.

    Regardless of decision being made as a result of the information, there are several important questions that are even more critical in today’s over-communicated world and these will be the discussions for the next few weeks.

    Next Week: Communication in Testing – What
    Following Week: Communication in Testing – How
    Final Blog of the Series: Communication in Testing – Message; Audience; and Transmission Method

    Next Blog Series: Testing Centre of Excellence

  • Malthus on Testing – A New Paradigm

    Last week we completed our discussion of how the proposed solutions to the Malthusian Catastrophe are only postponing the inevitable. Unlike development which can always go forward and create new code, testing always has a regression component for any code that integrates with existing applications. This adds  to the testing effort but doesn’t necessarily add value.

    The proposal we outline here is not entirely new although we are carrying it to another level. Portions of this are being done and have been done for years. However, we are suggesting a more intense and more rigorous application.

    Today, we find many people integrating applications to build something. They can borrow code or entire applications and make something new from it. The statement “there is an app for that” has never been more mainstream. However, everything that is borrowed or utilized may (not always) need to be tested to some level so we can trust that it does what it says it does and operates the way we need it to in our new configuration. Add to that Security concerns dealing with applications that are not under our control and may not have been built to the same level as we need and the chance of our new application failing increases substantially.

    We are recommending that a library of code pieces are created that have the following characteristics:

    1. They carry out a known function under known conditions.
    2. They have been tested thoroughly by an independent entity to prove number 1.
    3. They are secure from being compromised.

    Number 2 above may have levels of testing just like there are levels of code today depending on the risk of the application for which they are being used but the same process applies.

    People developing applications would be able to use this library secure in the knowledge that the three points above are guaranteed.

    Next series: Communication in Testing,

  • 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.

  • Acting on the Results – Redoing

    Last week we discussed how to measure the results of a Process Improvement initiative and how to successfully implement the process. This week we have assumed that the Process Improvement Initiative has been completed and we are now faced with Acting on the Results.

    There are two possible outcomes from the results and both lead to further action.

    1. The measurements and metrics indicate a successful process improvement and we have achieved the results we want.
    2. The measurements and metrics indicate an unsuccessful process improvement and we have to decide what to do next.

    In the beginning it is usually suggested that we review the measurements and derived metrics to ensure that we are measuring what we thought we were measuring. A false positive, (we think our program was successful but it was not) can be caused by either measuring the wrong item, deriving the wrong metrics or drawing the wrong conclusion. If the analysis indicates that the conclusion is correct then the following steps are recommended:

        1. Determine a new process improvement initiative.
        2. Determine if our existing metrics will properly measure the new initiative.
        3. Define new metrics as required.
        4. Implement and measure as before.

    If, after due analysis, we determine that our process improvement initiative did not lead to the correct result, then we have to decide between the following two possibilities:

        1. Undo the changes made and revert to the previous method of doing the process.
        2. Initiate another process improvement session to change the process to something better.

    For either of the above, we still need to measure and make sure we are accomplishing what is desired in terms of Process Improvement or maintenance of the status prior to the initial change.

    Note that none of this is based on supposition or guessing. No changes are made without supporting statistics.

    Next week: Quality Assurance – Doing it right the first time.