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================================================================================== Author: D.B.V.Phanindra Kishore. E-Mail: phanindrakishore.satyaprasad@avacorp.biz Company: AVACorp Technologies Pvt Ltd, Chennai - 600034 ==================================================================================
AVACORP Technologies
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Table of Contents
1.0 Abstract ....................................................................................................................................... 3
2.0 Tactical Perspective: ......................................................................................................................... 4 2.1 Early involvement of testing teams in SDLC process .................................................................... 4 3.0 Strategic Perspective: ....................................................................................................................... 5 3.1.1 Fine tune team selection process .............................................................................................. 5 3.1.2 Dynamic Centre of Excellence groups to leverage internal expertise .................................... 6 3.1.3 Ecosystem for knowledge management .................................................................................... 7 3.1.4 Focus on reusability ................................................................................................................... 8 3.1.5 Define and measure metrics based on business goals .............................................................. 9 4.0 Conclusion: ...................................................................................................................................... 10
AVACORP Technologies
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1.0 Abstract
Organizations across the world and across product lines depend on their ability to deliver products that are of high quality without having to invest significantly in their quality improvement programs. This is equally applicable in the software industry where the key mantra is to deliver products on time, within budget and with minimum defects that get detected by the end customer. However, it is only rarely that organizations realize the importance of testing the testing teams ability to deliver value beyond just testing the application. By making minor changes to the way testing team is structured and refactoring the teams involvement in the overall product development life cycle, organization can significantly enhance their ROI while reducing the time to market along with the overall cost of ownership. Forrester define Quality software as: Software that meets business requirements, provides a satisfying user experience, and has fewer defects. Lacking proper Test management or well thought out roadmap for quality, projects/products are generally not able to meet the expected quality standards. It might also be possible that organizational inefficiency, lack of proper knowledge on continuous process improvements and a host of similar factors result in budget and schedule overrun. This intern led to poor quality deliverables to the customer. To meet the quality standards organizations can bench mark their test process against standards like TPI & TMM. Assessing with standard processes will help in identifying the gaps and then focusing on these improvements will result in overall improvement in the testing organization. While there are a host of factors that can be considered as part of an organizations test capability improvement program, there are few that occupy an important position. Together the six focus areas (listed below) help test organization reduce redundancy, improve reusability, enhance teams capabilities, manage organizational knowledge (Knowledge management) and build the teams skill. 1. Early involvement in SDLC 2. Fine tune team selection process 3. Implement CoEs to develop expertise 4. Develop an eco-system for knowledge management 5. Implement and enhance organizational reusability of tools and processes 6. Design, develop and measure success through meaningful metrics The six factors listed above and elaborated below can be divided into two categories (a) The tactical approach and (b) The strategic approach. Tactical approach talks about what can be improved in the short term with the minimum investment of time and resources, whereas the strategic approach talks about areas of improvement that can have an extended period of time. Depending on context to context, this can be as low as six months and can go up to one year. However, it needs to be kept in mind that the time frame is indicative and should not be considered as a standard.
AVACORP Technologies
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AVACORP Technologies
Based on their experience, testing team can identify potential defects (application failures). This leads to defect prevention UAT / CAT test cases or scenarios can be defined upfront Helps develop an appropriate test strategy (in a very short period of time), identify risks, issues, dependencies and assumptions Helps establish and measure requirement clarity, define the scope and help identify resourcing needs early in the life cycle
In short, early involvement of the testing team will help the project reduce redundancy, reduce the test life cycle, improve the product quality and finally result in improved ROI.
AVACORP Technologies
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Listed below are some of the sample goals and objectives for CoEs. These are just indicative of the dimension but do not cover the entire spectrum of what can be done.
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Careful observation of the goals indicates that some of them cross the testing organization barrier and move on to provide support to other departments. As an example: developing of a reusable framework will not only help reduce testing time (while this is a benefit for the test organization) but also help improve the organizations brand (which is a goal from the organization perspective). This in turn can help sales / marketing team especially when they need to showcase organization capability.
Having proper knowledge management system will help in gaining the following business benefits Having cross functional knowledge sharing process in organizations will save project teams life cycle time Whenever unknown information with respect to domain, tools and techniques are required for project teams, KM will help in getting the required information from the KM repository Having proper KM system in testing organization will help indirectly in building robust reusable assets, frameworks, referable sales collaterals information This will help in cross leveraging the experience between testing teams
Following are some of the business benefits can be achieved by usage of tools and techniques in test organization by focusing on reusability. Reduced test execution time Reduced cost of test execution
AVACORP Technologies
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Increase in ROI Increased reusability of test assets across organization Ensures scalability and minimization of rework Consistent and repeatable test execution Improved utilization of resources (people and machines) Frees up test engineers time and helps them explore corner test conditions
Testing organization should have periodic reviews based on the project deliverables and conduct proper analysis to know the project health. Based on the action items testing teams or project teams should work accordingly based on the correction item suggested. This will help in reaching the quality goals and will ensure smooth delivery within budget. At the same time this assessment process will help in mitigating the risks indirectly. Some of most important metrics that need to be captured as part of the quality dash board analysis which is applicable to testing organizations are listed below Defect density (Code, test case, test script), Defect removal efficiency, Defect per test case, DSI (Code, Test case, Test script), DRR, Unit Test code coverage, Build stability, Unit test pass rate, QA test case code coverage, Fix quality, Maintainability Index are some of them which will play vital role in knowing the project health.
AVACORP Technologies
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4.0 Conclusion:
"Quality must move beyond the purview of just QA professionals to become an integrated part of the entire software development life cycle to reduce schedule delays, improve user satisfaction, and reduce the product risk. This eco system also builds a vibrant culture where knowledge sharing thrives and Test organization specific assets and productivity enhancers are built automatically. While Quality improvement programs are a great way, organization should focus on not just improving the Quality but should also focus on building the organizational structure in such a way that it addresses the organizational needs like having robust frameworks, having skilled resources, elimination of redundancy and ability to reuse test assets across the board with meaning metrics analysis in place. CoEs definitely one of the options that can help achieve these goals. Ultimately organizations can deliver products/applications within budget, as per timeline and with expected quality leading to high customer satisfaction.
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