Software Quality Assurance - The Heart of Total Quality
Introduction
Throughout my career, my teams have delivered high-quality products to the marketplace, ontime by becoming organizations that value the importance of the customer experience. The articles below describe real challenges I have faced and how I built value-chains that produced high-quality deliverables.
When it comes to quality, the bottom line is a satisfied customer. Quality organizations, engineering teams, and outsourcers all too often ignore the interests of customers by focusing on their own inward-looking quality metrics. This article explores some real-life situations and how I motivated my teams to achieve customer-driven quality focus.
Producing high quality software goods and services requires skillful management of the "quality value chain" from inception through support. QA and testing organizations are downstream and have to live with the consequences of upstream actions. This article discusses the methods used to build a healthy Demand/Fulfillment dynamic across the value chain. The result is a better alignment of customer expectations with software releases.
Metrics are all about creating actions around business goals. When it comes to metrics, there are numerous quality and testing possibilities. It is therefore important to carefully select ones that truly suit your situation. The ones that I have found most useful and cost-effective are discussed in this article.
Automation has become universally accepted as a means for saving costs. Replacing humans with testing tools is on the surface a no-brainer. But the choices QA organizations make about automation will have a profound effect on tool technology and more importantly, the culture of the organization. This article sheds light on approaches that work and where they fall seriously short of the mark.
As a long-time quality manager I have built and reshaped organizations many times in my career. I have all too often experienced QA organizations that perform nominal testing but are barely functional at promoting quality objectives within the business. This article exposes some of the deep cultural and technical challenges and how to correct them.
© 2009 Claude Fenner - Specializing in Software Management and Quality www.claudefenner.com