quality

Nov 3 2009   10:00AM GMT

Project Plans having no Place for ‘Documentation Process’ Compromise with the Quality

Posted by: Jaideep
project documentation, Project Plan, project quality, quality, project stage, software, software quality, testing, software testing, project implementation, Project Lifecycle, Project Management

If we have to compromise with the quality of project at various stages there are many ways to do that. Most stupid way will be to compromise with the quality of the software which in any case is going to create lot of hue and cry in the organization either prior to it goes to customer during internal testing, or when it goes to customer for implementation. The undercover holes covered howsoever smartly will create seepage sooner or later.

Most common mistake that is made during the complete lifecycle of a project is not formally giving documentation (required at various stages) in project plan by assuming that documentation is not that prime. It is presumed that either the documentation will be done at the end or it is taken too casually and told to be done by everyone without assigning a proper ownership.

Both – Quality of Software and Quality of Documentation play a lead role in project management. Compromising with any of the two leads to increased cost, loss of customer satisfaction, delay in implementation or revenue loss.

Oct 26 2009   10:00AM GMT

Five ‘must-have’ skills to be a Business Analyst

Posted by: Jaideep
business analyst, business analysis, Project Management, Software Project, software, business process, business rule, customer requirement, software requirement, quality, process, Development, business knowledge, technical knowledge

As stated in my previous post, a Business Analyst is a quite powerful role that establishes the base of a project. It is the first visible pillar for a project which involves communication, leadership, writing, technical and functional skills together. A business analyst has to have a great depth of knowledge of the business on one hand, a sharp understanding power, strong writing skills, great communicator, and a good influencer. Let us see what are the ‘must-have’ skills without which a business analyst can not survive? And why are those skills so important to be a business analyst? Without any relevance to the order in which they are mentioned (as all are equally important) these skills are:

5. Business Knowledge: A good amount of experience/ exposure/ knowledge of customer business are very important for a business analyst

4. Listen and Understand: A business analyst has to be a good listener and with a sharp understanding power without which all the discussions with customer will be fruitless.

3. Technical Knowledge: There will be quite a few technical discussions at customer site. The BA has to be quite conversant with the technologies and methodologies present at his organization.

2. Communication: A business analyst has to be a strong communicator. During the customer meetings, if he does not communicate well about his organization’s capabilities to build up the trust and confidence, probably customer may not gel well with his ideas.

1. Writing skills: Very important skill required for documentation and for conveying the right messages across the board.

Oct 23 2009   10:00AM GMT

Various roles of a Business Analyst

Posted by: Jaideep
business analysis, Project Management, Software Project, software, business process, business rule, customer requirement, software requirement, quality, process, Development

Business Analyst is a quite powerful role forming the base of a project. It is the first visible pillar for a project which involves communication, leadership, writing, technical and functional skills together. A business analyst has to have a great depth of knowledge of the business on one hand, a sharp understanding power, strong writing skills, great communicator, and a good influencer.

For a software company having various new development projects a business analyst has to understand the existing business processes, methodology, rules etc. of the customer, document it (which itself is a specialized task) and hand it over to development team to embed the customer requirements into the software to be built.

For a software (or IT) sales company a business analyst has to sit behind the sales/ business development teams – understanding their current process of acquiring new business or sustaining current business and bring out a better approach, methodology, process to enhance business in terms of new business and holding current business.

For a manufacturing company a business analyst has to understand the process, re-engineer it to enhance the production, product yield, thereby increasing customer satisfaction and reducing defects or rejections.

A business analyst ‘s various caps thus include – business process analyst, business strategy analyst, business methodology analyst thereby becoming a backbone to business process managers, sales teams, management, development teams , product teams, quality teams etc.

Oct 14 2009   10:00AM GMT

20 gems for project managers

Posted by: Jaideep
Software Project, project manager, tester, quality control, testing, software, quality, Development, developer, coding, coder, programmer, programming, technical knowledge, Bug, bug report

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

Oct 9 2009   1:17PM GMT

What sort of driver are you?

Posted by: Jaideep
Software Project, software delivery, Project Management, project manager, Project Development, project implementation, project stage, customer requirement, quality, product quality, software quality

I have seen different type of drivers on road: some drive very fast violating all rules and regulations to reach the destination. Can this attitude work in software development and delivery? I don’t think so, if the project manager is more worried about reaching the implementation stage without bothering about the customer requirements, probably he is calling for a big bunch of troubles.

Another set of drivers are overcautious type. They will take lot of time in building customer requirements and will be uncompromising towards quality of product to such an extent that every deadline will be crossed without meeting it. Can such project managers be liked by customers? Or by the management?

Our next category of drivers is ‘stick to the route’ kind. They will never change the route whatsoever is the hurdle is and whatsoever is the impact on the delivery. Can customer accept a project manager who is damn fussy about the requirements?

Some drivers believe in ‘change with the wind’ style. They start for a destination, get a call on the way from the customer to divert to another destination, and the driver agrees happily. Probably this is the quality that customer wants in the project manager these days.

Sep 23 2009   10:00AM GMT

Quality of documents says it all about the health of the project

Posted by: Jaideep
Project Management, project manager, Software Project, business analyst, coder, programmer, tester, quality

A software project has to undergo various stages before reaching the final stage of customer sign off. At each stage of the project there are certain set of documents that are maintained by the project team for internal or external purposes.

These documents are prepared by various team members – by business analysts, by coders, by project manager, by testers and by other managers.

The Quality and maturity of documents straightaway tell about the health of the project, the team, the management, the product and the progress. It tells clearly about the intentions behind the documentation – that if it is merely a formality or it is really meant for helping the project progress.

And it is not difficult to ascertain the intentions after going through the documents maintained or being maintained during the project.

Sep 3 2009   10:00AM GMT

The 80/20 rule in Software Testing

Posted by: Jaideep
pareto principle, software testing, software, time management, task management, life management, quality, QC, QA, quality control, programmer, tester, developer bug, business application, Software application

Pareto Principle or Pareto Rule is quite fascinating in managing personal and professional life, time management, task management, self motivation etc. Crux is if you focus few vital issues in life you manage major part of your life better. The same applies in profession, organization, department function, and activity too. Only thing is it is to be applied objectively, and smartly.

Let us see how it can work in terms of software testing and quality control:
80% of software quality is maintained by 20% of programmers
80% of bugs in an application are written by 20% of developers
80% of bugs are fixed in 20% of time
20% of a business application accounts for 80% of bugs

Aug 14 2009   10:00AM GMT

Six indicators for a project manager - of their downfall (or failure) in project management

Posted by: Jaideep
Software Project, Project Management, reliability, quality, software quality, testing, Bug, project manager

If you, as a project manager, are fond of thunderstorms, volcano eruptions, etc. it is ok howsoever you drive a project. Otherwise look below at six indicators mentioned below. Even if one of the reason prevails in your project’s lifecycle, manage it, get rid of it, immediately, before a small wound becomes a big septic.

Irregular releases – when plan or commitment varies from actual delivery inconsistently. Some plans finish in time, some with small variation and some with huge variation. It means there may be a volcanic surprise.

Drop in quality or inconsistent quality of product built: Testing is happening, bugs are being reported but if the product coverage is incomplete while testing, or volume of low quality bugs reported is higher as compared to some severe bugs skipped in reporting, there is a mishap going to happen for sure.

Wrong cycle time estimations: if your estimations are going haywired, you plan milestones and achieving them itself if becomes a project, and go beyond control for achievement – there is a mess, in a big way.

Unplanned expenditure like overheads, delays: all these estimates going wrong, will call for extra time for team members and extrapolation of deadlines – a clear indication of a thunderstorm coming on the way.

Predictability: if your team members lose their commitment level, your predictability will become a big question mark for your management and for the customer.

Reliability: your team members’ reliability will invariably start decreasing the moment all this starts happening – and so will be yours.

Aug 10 2009   10:00AM GMT

Two approaches in defining testing scope of an application

Posted by: Jaideep
Quality Assurance, software testing, quality control, QA, QC, functionality, new feature, Application development, quality, application quality, functional testing

There is no end to an application. It always asks for a new feature, alter in functionality, addition/ change of business rule etc. With any change in the existing application running in a live environment, the change needs to be tested for all aspects of quality before putting it live. The question comes what should be the scope of testing in this case. Should tester test only for the change part or the complete application?

A change in application small or big is always going to mark an impact on the whole application. Even if not on the whole application, to some extent at various places in the application. Sometimes it could be beyond the knowledge of developer.

Therefore, in my opinion, it is wise to test to whole application even if it going to take more time and efforts to minimize the risk of impact of ‘change’ in the application.

Aug 7 2009   10:00AM GMT

Ten Mantras for a software developer

Posted by: Jaideep
Software developer, software development, Application development, Software application, software testing, bug-free, Bug, software, application, bug identification, application building, code writing, application performance, business requirements, Business Rules, code validation, business process, process owner, end user, collaboration, tester, application functionality, software functionality, software performance, quality, customer experience, software build, bug fixing

Lot of efforts can be saved in terms of time and money if we reach to a stage of ‘first time right’ in application development. It has been proven largely that no good application can be built and released without extensive testing. Testing is not developers’ ball game – this is also a well proven fact. Reasons are many as far as it is concerned that why developers can’t build a bug-free application, or why can’t they test on their own. We are not going to discuss those reasons here. Focus here would be on what developers should keep in mind while building an application that it requires minimum efforts and time in all testing stages. As we all know the cost of bug fixing goes manifold, depending on how much distance (in terms of time and project stages) it has covered after development for bug identification. The bugs identified at a later stage, say during UAT cost more significantly as compared to the bug identified by the developer himself immediately after writing a code. Few qualities if a developer acquires and keeps in his mind while writing codes would not only benefit him but the organization he is working for and their customer also for whom the product is being built.

1. Commitment to application performance should be kept in mind while writing a code.
2. Clarity of business requirements and rules/ validations that are being translated into the application with real aptitude of business and not a developer. Don’t imagine and build. If there is some lack in clarity – discuss, record and build.
3. Treat yourself as the business process owner and end user – and build the application accordingly as if you have to use it. Don’t think yourself as a bartender, think as if you are preparing the drink for yourself.
4. Collaborate and build – rather than building in isolation- collaborate with other developers working on the application, the end user, and the testers.
5. Optimize your code – don’t just write it. There are n numbers of optimizers almost in all technologies. Use them and build a strong application in terms of functionality and performance. Be quality focused. Don’t do efforts that call for more efforts later.
6. Be focused. Don’t work on various applications development at the same time unless it is too mission critical.
7. Gain customer experience after launch of your application. It will certainly help you in your future builds. Build a customer satisfaction metrics.
8. Don’t take short cuts in fixing bugs – whatever stage they are identified. That way you will build more bugs while fixing identified bugs.
9. Work like a champion. There is a difference between playing a shot and playing an accurate shot.
10. Be loyal to yourself, your organization and your work.