NVP Software Solutions

Tag: QA

  • Starting Quality Assurance – Part 2

    Starting Quality Assurance can be difficult when there are existing projects already in progress, new projects starting up and operations running at full speed. There never seems to be a good  time to say “We are going to launch into Quality Assurance activities and start improving our processes”.  There will always be a more important operation or project related activity that needs to be solved that takes precedence.

    So, the second question we want to answer is When. Last week we discussed Why we would want to start Quality Assurance and the next step is to decide When.

    The obvious answer is now but that is almost never possible. The next best answer is to set a date and an objective for another date further down for achievement of the goal. Since this is often an extra task, beyond all the tasks that are already occurring to support the normal operations of the organization; it is also critical that it be reasonably small and limited.

    The easiest and most common process that organizations start is the recording of defects in a central location using standard Severity and Priority settings.

    The subtasks are the following:

    1. Select a repository to record the defects. This could be an open source free repository downloaded from somewhere; a purchased repository or (as the last choice!) a spreadsheet.
    2. Set a goal for a project or a date for defects to have been recorded.
    3. Determine some appropriate Severities that area applicable to your business. If you can’t think of any; either look online or contact us and we will provide some standard settings.
    4. Determine some appropriate Priorities that area applicable to your business. If you can’t think of any; either look online or contact us and we will provide some standard settings.
    5. Pick a (small) project and start recording. Even if the project is part way through, starting at the midpoint is better than not starting at all.
    6. Evaluate your progress towards your goal at the set date.

    Next Week: How

  • Starting Quality Assurance

    Starting Quality Assurance can be difficult when there are existing projects already in progress, new projects starting up and operations running at full speed.  There does not seem to be a good point in time to say “We are going to launch into Quality Assurance activities and start improving our processes”.  There will always be a more important operations or project related activity that needs to be solved today that will take precedence.

    So the first question we want to answer is Why. If we cannot answer the question Why for our particular situation then it is unlikely that any initiative will succeed. Since the answer to this question has to go to the highest levels of the organisation (given the perceived cost of quality), the answer must be put in business terms.

    So, given that premise, here are some possible answers to the question Why

    1. To reduce the amount of rework in any particular process and Save Money
    2. To get a product or service to market faster and Save Money
    3. To reduce the number of defects or process problems at all stages of the development and Save Money

    In general the arguments, as is obvious from the above, are made out in terms of saving money for the organization. The above are the obvious ones that are common to almost all organizations and can be adapted to any situation.

    For your particular situation, you need to look at the processes you use or the products you produce or the way you work and ask if you can apply the above to any aspect. If you cannot apply them directly then you need to look in detail at your processes and see if anything else applies with the caveat that it must have the end result of saving money.

    Next Week: When

  • Quality Assurance for Startups – Part 4

    The last three posts have concentrated on Quality Assurance for Startups. Next week we will move into Starting Quality Assurance (for an already existing organization). However, we will finish off this week with some small examples of Quality Assurance Processes that a Startup can adopt for little or no cost.

    The first and easiest one is a Incident Tracking Process; definitions, and standards. You can easily  download a free Incident Tracker online or simply use an Excel Spreadsheet. The part that tends to get ignored is the process and standards. Generating a incident tracking flow chart can be done on paper and takes little time to create and post. Standards for the Priority and Severity for incidents can be downloaded from the Internet or generated. The resistance is usually because it is viewed as unnecessary at this stage. However, if it is created and posted at this stage, it becomes part of the culture.

    The second one is the code control and promotion process. Similar to the above, it is generally not viewed as worthwhile at the Startup stage since everyone knows where the code is and how it is to be treated. It is also likely that not all steps or stages are needed at this time. However, another flow chart showing the steps and the expectations at this stage can save a lot of concerns later. The diagram will need to be augmented as the company grows and becomes more complex but the initial diagram is quick to create and solves a lot of problems.

    The third one is testing processes. Again, it may look like too much effort for too little return at this stage but the creation of a testing process, standards, and definitions can be very effective in ensuring that everyone is working in the same way and can avoid a lot of repetition and redundancy.

    None of the above are intended to take more than a few minutes to create and set up. The payback is quite high and long term benefits are huge.

  • Quality Assurance for Startups – Part 3

    Last week we discussed When to implement Quality Assurance for Startups. This week we want to dive a little more into How without impacting everything else a Startup needs to do to make sales happen.

    Often Startups make the assumption that Quality Assurance is unnecessary or unnecessary at this stage of the product or service life-cycle. This means that they might never get to it, and that’s not a dangerous practice to follow. There is also the obstacle of How to implement QA into processes without having it negatively impact the other areas of the business.

    There are several questions we like to start with for implementing QA:

    1. What is currently a problem? If you cannot identify anything that is a problem then it is unlikely that an initiative will go anywhere.
    2. Is there a solution to the problem? If you cannot identity a solution to the problem reasonably quickly then you are in danger of expending more effort than the return.
    3. Can the solution be implemented with current resources and in a series of steps that are able to be done by those resources? If the solution requires extra resources then again the effort will likely exceed the return.

    If the answers to all the above questions are positive then we are well on our way to identifying How to implement the required process improvements.

    Look at the what has been identified as problems that fit the above criteria.

    1. Pick the most tractable one.
    2. Post it somewhere where you and everyone else can see it.
    3. Invite solutions for the problem.
    4. Hold a brainstorming session to pick the best solution.
    5. Create the list of steps that need to be done to implement the best solution.
    6. Determine what constitutes overall success and success for each step.
    7. Implement the measurement or metric that will measure whether that result has been realised.
    8. Measure the current status.
    9. Implement the steps.
    10. Measure the results.

    None of this will be immediate but it will improve over time.

    Next week: Examples.

  • Quality Assurance for Startups – Part 2

    In the last blog we discussed why Quality Assurance for Startups was appropriate despite it not being the first thing on startup leaders’ minds. This is understandable given the amount of other work that needs to be done just to get going as a new business.

    It would be pointless to introduce a full Starting-Quality-Assurance process in the beginning stages. The effort involved would detract from the other to-dos and could interfere with growth. With that said, we can introduce a limited Quality Assurance program during the startup stage that will benefit all without adversely impacting the growth of the organisation as follows:

    1. At the end of each week, take 15 minutes and review what has been done and how it is being done.
    2. At the end of each month, take 1 hour and review what has been done and how it is being done.
    3. In both cases, take brief notes and file them.
    4. At the completion of the one month meeting, consolidate the notes and divide them into groupings. For example: Development; Quality Control; Process; Customer Feedback: Recurrent Issues
    5. Look for items that might be costing you money; that are easy to correct and can be implemented immediately.
    6. Look for items that have a medium term to correct and may still be worthwhile
    7. The biggest items to look for are those that may not be easy or fast to correct but may have a big impact in the future if left unchanged.

    If the items fall into the easy category; make the changes now and implement going forward.

    If the items fall into the medium category; try to subdivide them into things that can be done immediately and implement some of those.

    If the items fall into the long-term or hard category; there may be a need to assess how much effort it will require to implement a change.

    We are going to tackle how to implement next week.

  • Quality Assurance for Startups

    Quality Assurance for Startups sounds like a bit of an oxymoron. Startup companies and leaders have enough on their mind without adding that ‘horribly slow and stodgy Quality Assurance Process’ to the mix.

    This concept is wrong for a number of reasons:

    1. Quality Assurance is never about being slow or bringing the process to a halt. It’s all about speeding up delivery of whatever you are supplying.
    2. Set up good processes at the start of your business and make improvements that have the biggest return, before bad or wasteful habits become entrenched.
    3. A startup needs to provide a product or service that ‘delights the final customer’. A product or service that falls short in some makes for a short-lived company.

    What does a startup need from Quality Assurance? Just enough to make the final deliverable delight the customer!

    So what should you have?:

    1. Processes that ensure feedback from the customers is received.
    2. Sufficient information about the way the deliverable was constructed so that feedback can be actioned.
    3. Assurance that the changes made will not impact existing functionality adversely.
    4. Consideration of how to implement future growth opportunities.

    Of the above list, the last two are the more important.

    We generally would consider the third point to be a form of regression testing and the earlier that is planned and implemented, the cheaper it is. However, it is often left (as we can personally testify) to a later release and the startup spends thousands of hours and a lot of funding retroactively forcing in regression testing. Minimal consideration of the possibility of needing this will SAVE A LOT later on.

    The fourth point above is slightly more difficult to apply since it requires some anticipation of future needs based on limited information. We will leave that one for next week.

  • 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.