Featured Papers on Process Improvement and Management
- Test Process maturity models - Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow
This paper gives a historic account of Maturity models in “software testing” and relevance of these models in current and future state of Software testing industry. This paper also presents some initial ideas and thoughts around a new framework that reflects current state of testing. This framework is influenced by “context driven school of testing” and stresses the skill of tester, importance of cognitive thinking and human intelligence – a notable deviation from earlier models that more or less ignored “Human aspect” of software testing. There is a need to take a fresh look at Test process models and make them more relevant to the way the Testing world is progressing. Future Test process maturity models need to recognize human aspect of testing, resist the temptation of drawing a factory like flow chart for the test activities, recognizing the importance of critical thinking. The theme of “Critical thinking” will become centric to these models. They will be more “context driven” than those built with canned set of predefined activities.
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- RARE - Framework for Perennial Process Maturity
The great challenge for any business assessed at a higher maturity level (CMM Level 5 / CMMI Level 5) is to have an ability to sustain the maturity of there business process and to leverage on this maturity to continuously improve at the business and operational level. The challenge is characterized by rapid growth, integration and alignment of changes that take place in the existing internal system and environment. Initiatives to sustain the maturity depend to a large extent on the individuals leading the effort and lack the rigor of penetration within the business. Different techniques like audits, assessments, metrics program and project management reviews are followed to assess the maturity of each operation / project; however these methods are erstwhile and look into only certain focus area of business processes; and do not elucidate to the project team the areas they need to concentrate to align themselves towards a higher maturity level as of the Organization. Lower the process maturity of the operational/project, higher the probability of failure of the project, on the other hand the risks the project exposed to also increases the probability of failure. It becomes crucial to have a framework, which facilitates a consistent measure of these two parameters and alert the senior management at the earliest. RARE framework leverages on the fact that each project team has the ability to contribute towards specific areas beyond what the process naturally stipulates, but typically the project team needs to be aware of the lapse in implementation and a clear defined task to position them towards improvement and seamless integration to changes that could happen throughout the life cycle of the project. RARE framework assists the practitioner in recording the facts in the project, accessing there Process Compliance Index (PCI) and Risk Exposure Value (REV), respond to the facts and emend the performance. The framework uses PCI and REV to determine the probability of failure associated with the project and alert the management early in the life cycle of the project.
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- Comprehensive Software Estimation
Software estimation has grown beyond estimating the functional requirements. Estimation today is done for a gamut of activities, other than functional requirements, ranging from transitioning assignments to consultancy engagements at onshore. This paper provides some practical insights into software estimation based on Infosys experience. It talks about: Effort Estimation for implementing functional requirements, Effort Estimation for following additional non functional requirements: transitioning, re-usability, data migration, testing, training needs of the client. The scope of software project estimation in this paper is limited to estimating size and effort. It does not deal with schedule and cost estimation.
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- Design Phase Testing Model – A Design Assessment
Object oriented programming is the most effective approach to build inherently flexible software, and was quickly adopted by industry in the recent years. The most demanding issue that needs to be addressed in software development is object-oriented design, which plays an important role in determining the proper structure of Object oriented software. In this paper, it is proposed to bring out a Design Phase Testing (DPT) Model to evaluate the object-oriented software in the design phase. The object oriented design structure of the software is converted to code level using a CASE Tool. The generated code is the input to the Design Phase Tool, which measures all the attributes related to the object oriented software design metrics. The result of the generalized Design Phase Tool is a High Level Design Quality Indicator (HLDQI), which gives more room to improve the design of the software in the early stages of software development life cycle before coding. In this method, the DPT model points out the various design imperfections. Essentially, the methodology attempts to bring in improvements needed to achieve the best possible results, in terms of efficiency, effectiveness, and flexibility. In order to create and maintain a high quality design, quality assurance in the form of design assessment and review are developed. The design quality covers most of the object-oriented features like encapsulation, inheritance and polymorphism. To assess design phase validation, case studies have been performed on object-oriented models designed in UML.
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- Simple Steps to Achieve SQA
In this paper we shall try to simplify Quality Concepts, Software Testing and How to handle time pressure in Real life Systems development methodology.
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