NVP Software Solutions

Tag: Software Quality Assurance

Workforce Development
Workforce Development

If you want to update the skills of your workforce and move them to the front edge of knowledge, consider our upskilling and training program. NVP has partnered with a worldwide Quality Assurance training provider to bring this to your organization.

The Lifecycle contains the following 6 components:
1. Strategic Planning
2. Skill Assessments
3. Learning Design
4. Learning Delivery
5. Certification
6. Sustaining Competency
The Learning Paths include:
1. Agile Tester
2. SOA Web Services Tester
3. Functional Test Engineer
4. Manual Testers to Test Automation
5. Project Leads to Project Manager
6. Design Professional
Learning Programs:
1. Quality and Process Improvement
2. Project, Program & Portfolio Management
3. IT Service Management
4. Business Process Improvement
5. Agile Methods
6. Agile Engineering & Testing
7. Innovation & Design Thinking
Contact us

Photo by Antenna on Unsplash
June 24, 2021
Register for the June 2021 TASSQ and KWSQA Events

Register for TASSQ and KWSQA today

You might want to consider these events to network with other QA people or learn some of the new ideas in QA.

NVP Software Solutions will be participating in the following software testing and quality assurance event happening this June in Ontario, Canada. Due to Covid-19 restrictions the events are online and are available to all. Check out the relevant websites for more information and to register. This is a great opportunity to connect with other software testing and quality assurance professionals. We hope to see you there!

Photo by Daniela Mota on Unsplash

June 29, 2021 6:00 p.m. EDT – Online – Event is being offered for free.

BEST PRACTICES FOR TESTING MATURE ECOMMERCE APPS

Speaker: Kundan Joshi, Register here

June 23, 2021 11:55 a.m. Online

Panel Discussion: How Do Things Work Where You Work?

Speakers: Panel

Register here

June 21, 2021
Register for the May 2021 TASSQ and KWSQA Events

Register for TASSQ and KWSQA today

You might want to consider these events to network with other QA people or learn some of the new ideas in QA.

NVP Software Solutions will be participating in the following software testing and quality assurance event happening this May in Ontario, Canada. Due to Covid-19 restrictions the events are online and are available to all. Check out the relevant websites for more information and to register. This is a great opportunity to connect with other software testing and quality assurance professionals. We hope to see you there!

Photo by Daniela Mota on Unsplash

May 25, 2021 6:00 p.m. EDT – Online – Event is being offered for free.

APPLYING AI TO STATIC CODE ANALYSIS AND UNIT TESTING

Speaker: Igor Kirilenko, Parasoft VP of Development Register here

May 26, 2021 11:55 a.m. Online

Baking Quality In: How Testers Can Help Drive Continuous Improvement

Speaker: Ali Hill

Register here

May 24, 2021
What should be reported from your Testing Efforts – Part 1?

This seems like an obvious question and many people have successfully conquered it and set up a standard for reporting. Every once in a while it falls apart and people get blindsided by extra requests that they did not expect but for the most part it works fairly well.

However, even when it is well planned, there is often a substantial difference in what people expect. Some of your stakeholders will want every detail of every test result, defect, and metric that you can generate. They will look and evaluate and ask questions. Others will want to concentrate on the highlights and only investigate when there is an obvious problem that is impacting the project. The last category might be summed up by a comment I heard at one Project Meeting addressed to the test manager and coming from the biggest stakeholder: “As long as you say it is okay; I don’t want to hear anymore”. We removed the actual names to protect the guilty!

While we will come back to this question in a couple of weeks and welcome your input in the interim, one obvious comment comes to mind immediately. Test tools have had a huge impact on this aspect of testing. The ability to record almost everything, drill down, add comments, set statuses, and move items from user to user has facilitated reporting.

In an interesting story from one client a long time ago, the layers of management made the whole process spin out over two weeks from the time the test was actually done to the time the report was consolidated for the last layer of maangement. We have moved a long way from that!

May 13, 2019
Does your software Testing Pay – Part 4
“Does your Software Testing Pay” is the question we posted six weeks ago. We posted a simple calculation for a ROI and then a few comments that were received as feedback. Those comments were appreciated since they extended the idea past the direct defect costing calculation. Today we want to wrap up this series with some general comments that extend the idea a little farther.

For the most part we have concentrated on the Software Testing aspect of Quality Assurance. Almost everyone we speak with is familiar with this aspect. Most software companies or those who depend on software complete some form of testing and the concept of testing can be generalised to cover a multitude of activities. However, it is not the entire picture.

So, at the risk of making the title slightly inaccurate, what other aspects of Quality Assurance can be considered:
1. Process improvement for the entire SDLC.
2. Timely intervention at the Root Cause of many of the defects to prevent them from occuring in the first place.
3. Concentration on the required end-result to make sure everyone is working towards that end. It is suprising how often this is obscured in large organisations. We attended a course a couple of weeks ago and spoke to the instructor afterwards and apparently many people on the course have only been told a very small piece of what they need to do (and part of that was to attend the course although the reason why was not provided). Not only is that against the concepts of keeping people informed of why they are doing something but it is also very de-motivating.
The above list (particularly number 1) can cover a lot items that are very detailed and can add a lot of value to the Quality Assurance efforts. We may take this up in the fall.
April 29, 2019
Does your software Testing Pay – Part 3
“Does your Software Testing Pay” is the question we posted four weeks ago. We then posted a simple calculation for a ROI two weeks ago.
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.
April 8, 2019
Does your software Testing Pay – Part 2
“Does your Software Testing Pay” is the question we posted two weeks ago.
There are obviously two parts to this question, one is how much it costs and the other is how much it saves.

The cost portion is reasonably easy:
1. Chargeback rate on resources (means hours per release must be recorded).
2. Equipment and space usage (if not included in the above).
3. Test Tool cost (amortized over all the projects)
4. Opportunity cost if the resources should be engaged in something else.
The savings portion is somewhat harder:

What would each found defect have cost to fix in production? This is obviously an estimate. One calculation is supplied below.
1. Look at each defect found by testing.
2. Estimate the probability of it occuring after release of the code to the users. You might want to take estimates from several people and average them. Either the probabilities must be between 0 and 1 or else you need to convert to a figure between 0 and 1 before using it.
3. Estimate the cost to the organisation under the assumption that the defect does occur in production. This cost includes the direct costs to the company (fixing, testing and deploying); the indirect costs (administration etc) that are often hidden (Iceberg – 9/10 of the costs are hidden)
4. The cost of the customers in rework, lost data, inability to respond proerly.
5. Add up the costs per defect and multiply by the percentage.
6. Add up the resulting figure for all defects found by testing for a release.
If Savings > Costs your software testing is paying for itself.
March 25, 2019
Does your Software Testing Pay?

“Does your Software Testing Pay” is another question (in the series we are addressing here) that comes up quite frequently. Although it may not be stated directly it can manifest itself in the following actions:
1. Lack of resources for testing.
2. Lack of time provided for testing.
3. Lack of suitable hardware on which to conduct testing
4. Lack of software testing tools.
5. …
This is not a comprehensive list but it covers many of the major manifestations of not having an answer as to whether the testing pays. If the question cannot be answered, then it is difficult to justify expenses or investment in testing. In addition, some Quality Assurance people go to great lengths to avoid answering this question.
Come back in two weeks to see one way of addressing this question. It will require research, metrics, and statistics.

Contact us or join the discussion.
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March 10, 2019