Software Quality Management via Test Process Improvement

Ever since the software engineering discipline was born, there is lot of investment to address software quality related issues. The software quality is becoming a continuously challenging as complexity of software and the software solution users expectations are going up significantly. People looked at solution for software quality issue by addressing the software development process looking at standard for process improvements like ISO 9001 and CMMI. The TMMi framework has been developed by the TMMi Foundation as a guideline and reference framework for test process improvement and is positioned as a complimentary model to the CMMI version 1.2 addressing those issues important to test engineering community.

From my experience many projects will budget 30-40% of total cost of project to testing but we always land up in spending more in many cases due to late stage detection of defects or insufficient testing leading to defect escape to field and so on. It is important to look at controlling this software testing budget overflow by focusing on "Effectiveness and Efficiency" factor for all testing efforts in the entire software development life cycle.

I feel by looking at TMMi framework one can find the gaps in people competency to perform a specific role, process over heads in end-to-end software development life cycle, and gaps in usage of right set of tools  which helps to increase efficiency, accuracy and sufficiency factor of testing in this business driven challenging situations. Thought will share the practical application of process driven approach to increase effectiveness and efficiency of testing using TMMi in series of postings. 

Is there a crude way to know where we are currently in test process maturity in your organization? Take a look at these slides.  

http://slidesha. re/MCN-Quick-TP-Assess

TMMi is a registered trademark of TMMi Foundation.
TMMi Foundations makes no warranties of any kind who prefer to use this framework for test process improvement

Appreciate readers views and comments.

Solving business problem with Test Process Improvement

What kind of problem if you have should take a look at improving existing test process?

I suggest you look at any of these problem symptom given below, if 50% 0f the core management team feels "yes" to two or more potential problems below, then I strongly recommend to take Test Process improvement initiative as management sponsored project.

1. Releases are delayed significantly due to quality issues
2. Test cases we have seems to be not adequate resulting in bad releases
3. Major defects are encountered only during system testing resulting in more QA cycles than planned
4. Though organization encourage multi-leveled test focus but planning process and competency of team not helping to achieve this effectively
5. Product is evolving more regression cycles than planned and unable to cope up with commitment to major releases
6. Risks are not analyzed correctly after test results are out resulting in wrong decisions
7. Product seems to be stable, more customization and releases happening resulting in lot of effort going into test execution phase
8. All aspects of quality not assessed like Load, Stress, Performance, and Scalability (LSPS) thereby Marketing/Sales unable to position product correctly in the market place
9. UAT by customer not happening as per plan resulting in delayed revenue realization against plan
10. Unable to get right set of people for projects when needed

I also recommend to baseline the above problem quantitatively like in what percentage of projects these problem exists and see the improvement with same measurement after you have modified the processes and used by team for 3-6 months.

Testing team organization

Introduction

Many organizations are experimenting with different operational models to sustain a strong testing team with various business challenges they are facing. I am sharing my observations made in entire journey as software professional. Each model attempted had its own issues and challenges. It is important that organization attempting any of this model to aware of these potential issues and take necessary steps to counter them.

http://www.slideshare.net/mcnagaraj/testing-team-7816329

Effective test process and long sustenance of test engineers were observed more in the case of “Independent testing team under Test Manager” model. Test engineers started seeing career path for their growths. Test process improvement initiatives focused at organization level than project level.