NVP Software Solutions

Tag: Process Improvement

  • 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.

  • Acting on the Results

    This is the first of two blogs devoted to implementing metrics and discusses the piece most likely to cause failure. Assuming that the metrics were properly identified, measured and the results analyzed, we are now at the point of Acting on the Results of the metrics.

    There are two major ways in which a organizations tend to act on results.

    1. Making major changes all at once and cleaning up the results.
    2. Incremental changes

    Making major changes all at once

    In this approach the organization identifies where it wants to be, determines the changes and makes them all at once. This is sometimes called the Big Bang approach, often followed by the Gib Gnab which is a Big Bang in reverse
    There are several steps:

    1. Determine where the end point of the changes would be
    2. Make the changes to get there
    3. Look for what has gone wrong or is incomplete or has been resisted (this will likely be a long list)
    4. Fix the problems

    Incremental changes
    In this approach the organization identifies where it wants to be, determines the changes and decides on individual small steps that will end up getting to the correct point.
    There are several steps:

    1. Determine where the end point of the changes would be
    2. Determine individual small steps that will ultimately lead to the end result
    3. Coordinate the individual steps for each objective
    4. Obtain buy in from the affected parties for the individual steps
    5. Start making the steps
    6. Measure the progress continuously making changes if any measurements show adverse results
    7. Watch for progress towards the final goal

    If the above process is carried out correctly, not only will we get to the final point, we will also have support for our next measurement program. If any of these look unfamiliar give us a call and we will talk about it.

    Next week: Acting on the results – Redoing

  • Implementing Metrics

    Implementing Metrics is the hardest aspect of the entire Process Improvement process. It is reasonably easy to determine a need for metrics – anything that can be measured and will lead to cost savings is a candidate for a metric. It is usually fairly straightforward to determine what to measure as long as the question as to what is needed has been answered correctly. Some effort may be required to get to the correct metric that measures the actual cost of any issue or failure but some experimentation can usually lead to a good approximation and it can be modified after if required. The actual measurement needs to have all the characteristics of a good measurement but that can be determined.

    Implementing the metric falls into two categories – one of which we will discuss in this post and following up with the other one in the coming weeks. The two categories are:

    1. Taking the measurements.
    2. Acting on the results.

    Taking the measurement

    Taking the measurement assumes we have defined the need for the metric, have researched what and how we want to measure and are ready and wiling to implement. Now comes the part that affects other people and projects. It is unlikely that it is just our project or our work that will need to be measured. If it was just ours, we could have completed the measurement or simply implemented the process improvement long ago and moved on. This is now going to impact other timelines and people.

    There are several steps:

    1. Determine who or what is going to be impacted
    2. Quantify the impact
    3. Anticipate the objections
    4. Prepare answers to the objections
    5. Demonstrate the benefits
    6. Win Support
    7. Start the measurement program
    8. Provide support to the people doing the measurement
    9. Publish the results
    10. Be honest about the results

    If the above process is carried out correctly, not only will we get valid and useful results, we will also have support for our next measurement program. If any of these look unfamiliar give us a call and we well talk about it.

    Next week: Acting on the results.

  • Using Metrics for Process Improvement

    There are three aspects to using metrics for Process Improvement:

    • Defining the correct metric to gather
    • Gathering the correct statistics to determine that metric
    • Making use of the results

    We have already discussed the first two in previous posts so we will make the assumptions that the correct metric has been defined and the correct statistics gathered to support that metric. We now need to make use of those metrics. We will start with an example related to Software Testing and then move to the general case.

    Assume we have an existing application to which we are making changes over time. It is a reasonably critical application for our company and we have built an extensive set of regression tests over the years. The regression tests have been augmented with new ones that represent implemented functionality. The regression tests are run with each release of code. We have been retaining the statistics on the number of tests that fail each time the regression tests are run. The failures are investigated, fixed if necessary (high enough priority), and the release implemented.

    Recently the number of failures for each run of the regression base has been increasing and it is becoming difficult to investigate and fix all the failures prior to implementation.

    The following need to be checked:

      1. Is the percentage of defects the same as before and the raw number is increasing solely as a result of the regression base getting bigger?

    This requires another measurement to determine the size of the regression base so we can complete the comparison.

      1. Is the number of defects increasing as a result of the increasing size of the application?

    This also requires another measurement that can determine the size of the application.

      1. Is the number of defects increasing as a result of making parts of the application active that were not used before?

    Again this requires a measurement that indicates application usage.

    The action to be taken depends on the answers to the above question and may vary from doing nothing to starting some refactoring and major rewrites.

    We have outlined three general principles with this example:

    1. Gather the statistics (both for the activity that we want to measure and for comparison purposes)
    2. Investigate the reasons for any change
    3. Take action based on that change.

    Contact us to talk about your metrics and how they can be used.

  • Examples of QC & QA Metrics

    It is reasonably easy to define measurements and metrics for any particular organization or project. The bigger question is whether those metrics are relevant to the project and work at hand.

    Metrics or Measurements Specific to Quality Control

    • Number of tests
    • Number of defects
    • Defects per module
    • Percent of tests completed

    The above are fairly obvious examples of metrics and are quite frequently gathered along with a number of others as Quality Control and Quality Assurance data. Many of the test tools supplied commercially or available as Open Source gather one or more of these measurements automatically and make them available on graphs and in spreadsheets for manipulation.

    Metrics or Measurements Specific to Quality Assurance

    • Number of processes in place
    • Degree of Acceptance of a process
    • Effectiveness of any process
    • Unmeasured processes

    The above metrics vary from easy-to-gather and maintain to almost impossible to accurately estimate. They usually do not depend on any particular project although they may be department dependent based on the level of detail. However, we find that most organizations, while using many processes with varying degrees of effectiveness rarely make a concerted attempt to measure them. It is very tempting to simply use the process without considering whether or not it could be improved.

    The key questions to ask are as follows

      1. Can the metric or measurement be gathered? (Preferably without impacting the test or quality effort.
      2. Are the figures accurate? (This needs to be tested just like the application.)

    & Most important

    1. Are we making use of the metric to provide information to the project or organization?

    The reason that we place such emphasis on the last point is that we encounter far too many instances where metrics and measurements are being gathered with no clear idea of why or how they can be used.

    • Do you want to know if your processes are effective?
    • Do you want to know if your processes can be improved? (And how to do it)
    • Do you want to know how you compare to other organizations?

    Contact us to see how your company can measure your metrics.

    Next week we will discuss using Metrics.

  • Quality Assurance Metrics

    In our last post we listed the need for some way of measuring Process Improvement without going into too much detail about how. What we were referencing was Quality Assurance Metrics.

    We define a metric similar to the way Wikipedia does in that it is the degree to which software possesses some desired characteristic. This feeds directly into the comments from our last post about needing to have something to measure in order to know if Process Improvement has occurred.

    More specifically, we can define a Measurement as something that has a single dimension: Height; Weight; Count of defects; Count of Requirements and many others.

    A Metric is derived from two or more Measurements and is often expressed as a ratio or a percentage. For example, we might count the number of defects but we might also count the number at each Severity level and then express that as a percentage of the total. This gives us a lot more information as the following example shows:

    If we have 100 defects and 20 of them are of the highest severity then we can state that 20% or one fifth are of the highest severity. We can watch that percentage over the duration of the project and track its movement up and down. We can also compare our percentage of highest severity defects to other projects directly using the percentage and see if our percentage is out of line with other projects. Note that this removes the bias that might occur with different project sizes. If someone has a much smaller project, they would expect commensurately fewer defects in total but might experience a similar percentage of high severity ones.

    In general metrics normalize the results to allow comparisons.

    As Peter Drucker said “you can’t manage what you can’t measure,”

    Give us a call to see what Metrics you need!

  • Quality Assurance Supports Process Improvement

    Quality Assurance Supports Process Improvement by showing us when the improvement has occurred. This is typically done through measuring the existing process; making the change and then measuring the results of the new process. In last week’s blog we discussed examples of Process Improvement. Now we need to ensure that the Improvement has actually occurred.

    The initial steps to tracking improvement are as follows:

    • Identify the process we want to improve
    • Identify the aspect of that process that needs to be improved
    • Identify a characteristic that will show if the improvement has taken place after the change
    • Find or create a measurement that will show change occurring in the characteristic
    • Measure the characteristic under the current process for a sufficient length of time to get a valid result
    • Make the change
    • Measure the characteristic under the new process for a sufficient length of time to get a valid result

    The above steps are not necessarily easy and will depend on what already exists in the place you are working. In order to do the first three steps you need to have processes in place or be able to identify them and their characteristics. The fourth step requires working out a measurement that validly checks the aspect that is planned for improvement. We then need to wait for while the measurement is taken with the current process. The change has to be implemented and used in the process without any modifications in order to allow us to make valid measurements of the impact of the change.

    Once all this is done, then we are in a position to measure the difference and decide on whether the process was actually improved. Quality assurance supports all of this by defining the necessary measurements, gathering the statistics and analyzing the results. NVP Software Solutions can complete all of the above steps for you.

  • Examples of Process Improvement

    Examples of Process Improvement are sometimes a little harder to find and measure than Product Improvement. As long as you have a standard to compare a product, any change can be determined and it is usually easier to determine if the quality of the product has improved or not. Also, we may not have to actually determine the measurement methodology prior to the product being produced. We can take an existing product, determine a standard and decide if it has met that standard. Future products can then be compared against that standard. A process, on the other hand, does not necessarily have an end product. It is part of what produces the end product and may not ‘exist in the literal sense’ after it is finished.

    There are two ways we can measure Process Improvement and then determine if the Process has improved.

    • Measure the created product. This becomes product measurement and that can be used as feedback to improve the process.
    • Measure the actual process.

    The first has already been covered so we will discuss the second.
    If we make a change to the process, the fundamental question is has the process improved.
    Examples:

    • The process continues to generate product after a change with no reduction in quality. Process Improvement.
    • The process generates the same product while using less materials. Process Improvement.
    • The process generates the same product with less waste. Process Improvement.
    • The process is halted or interrupted less often than before. Process Improvement.
    • Less resources are required for the same quality product. Process Improvement.
    • The process has reduced variation. Process Improvement.

    All of the above require a proper measurement process (another process) to be in place before the process is launched. It is very difficult to measure some of the above process improvements without having an existing measurement process in place. This may eventually remind you of The Siphonaptera!

    However, if you want to find out about your own processes, take a look at our Assessment process which identifies them.