programming

How to predict the number of bugs in the next code of a programmer

You have a programmer who is writing codes for years that comes to you for testing. The programmer might be coding for a number of projects simultaneously or sequentially. Similar would be the case with you. You would be testing a number of projects simultaneously or one after the other. By now your subconscious mind knows the pattern of bug writing while coding by each of the programmer. But since these patterns are not recorded or analyzed you can not predict the probable number of bugs in the next set of a code from a programmer.

You can do that with the help of your bug reports so far you have submitted back to the programmer or development team. Just pull out your last ten bugs reports produced from the code written by the same programmer. Check for a specific number of lines of code how many bugs were found. Based on this one report’s bugs were from how many lines of code. Do the same exercise for all other reports. Take an average for all ten reports.

Based on the number of lines of code, this way you can easily predict the number of bugs that will be there in the fresh set of code submitted by the programmer for testing.

20 gems for project managers

1. A project manager is always right
2. Quality is seriously maintained by developers while developing software
3. A separate set of people (quality control or testers) is not required to take care of the software produced or developed
4. Testers don’t do any substantial value addition in product development
5. Testers lack business knowledge
6. Testers lack technical knowledge
7. Testers lack essential skills to test software
8. Testers don’t understand product requirements well
9. All developments and implementations are prone to extensions because of change in customer requirements or other customer constraints
10. All delays in development and implementation are due to customer
11. Testers have a very little role to play in product development
12. Testers need less than 1% of project time for testing and reporting bugs
13. Testers should be able to test the product well even if substantial knowledge related to product has not been shared with them
14. Testers are the biggest misleading agents
15. Developers and programmers are not testers and thus are not supposed to test what they develop
16. Testers are de-motivators to programmers and developers
17. Testers are project delayers
18. Customers blame development and implementation teams just to hide their own shortcomings
19. Customers don’t know to explain their processes and business rules well
20. Customers are always interested in delaying the project

Yu-ai = developer-tester

Yu-ai in Japanese means fraternity means people engaged in a particular occupation. It corresponds to “you and I” in English. Any software project does not shape well without the exhaustive contributions of developers and testers engaged in that project. Both communities are singular pieces of a jig-saw puzzle that becomes complete only if they are organized, arranged and sequenced in a proper manner.

Both manage CHANGE. One fulfils the requirement, another checks it and verifies it. Developer’s efforts are once synchronized with the testers efforts result in a good product.

Coalition of both - the developers and testers making a strong bond with a common motive of producing a customer focused product. Their combined efforts are meant to overcome the dissatisfaction of customer and ineffectiveness of the product. If they do not gel together, their efforts fail to address the various issues in the software that burst out at the time of product facing the customer.

The ultimate goal is to overcome differences, respect each other and provide mutual support to each other during the product development

Project Management – Tasks vs. Milestones

A new project is always divided into small tasks and based on the resources available, the task(s) are allocated to individuals by the project manager (PM). A simple metrics is important to follow to monitor (and manger) the completion of tasks and thereby figuring out at any moment of time – the progress of the project. Completion of all tasks automatically declares the completion of the project.

Customer and management will never be interested to go into the detail of each task, PM (you) and your team may be and should be. But your one of the major task during a project is to keep customer and management updated on what is happening, regarding the progress of the project.

Your team of individual developers, programmers, coders or other technical related functions, although have accountability for the tasks assigned to them in individual for which they put in all their efforts to meet your/their completion plans as per the targets set.

So far so good, but as far as satisfaction, and feel of achievement is concerned, you need to group a set of tasks (the important ones that really give sense of achievement) into milestones. The customer and management will be interested in milestones achieved instead of tasks completed. Your team members will feel motivated, inspired and cheerful on achieving these milestones. And above all you will have time to appreciate and celebrate your team’s achievements that you can not do rightfully in case of tasks.

Milestones have more visibility as compared to tasks.

Mr. PM, what metrics you use for measuring “Task Completion”

It is not important what metrics you (the project manager) use, because unless and until you understand the meaning of “task” and “task completion”, you can’t get into the mode of monitoring and measuring it. The progress (or completion) project as a whole is measurable only if it is broken into pieces termed as “tasks”. Based on your resources you can allocate different tasks to different developers/ technical guys. But again the questions arise are – “what do you want to measure?” and on top of it, “do you really want to measure?”. If the answer is “yes” for the second question, then you will start thinking about “how to measure?”.

Metrics or method of measuring is not critical, it is the “what” that matters most here. So when you break up your software project into tasks, those should be measurable and the person doing it has to be accountable for it. Before making your programmer (or the technical person) accountable for a task, you have to evaluate – “is (s)he is fit for the task being assigned?”.

Your method of measurement will decide the clarity of progress of project to you, your team, the management and to the customer. Don’t accept a report from your subordinate declaring a task as completed unless you yourself are convinced. For your conviction you can get it checked by another coder, technical person or quality person, or you can check on your own, depending on the criticality of the task. Since you are going to report to management and the customer about completion of a task, it is important to confirm beforehand.

Transparency about the project progress is as important as the authenticity to both – the management and the customer.

Integrity of task completed is another measure that you have to take into account for your project completion.