Category Archives: product quality

How to measure software quality – Starting out

Process quality has been very popular over the past two decades.  From CMM and ISO9001 to 6 sigma, Lean, BPM & beyond we have seen a large body of work produced on the premise that “the quality of the process … Continue reading

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Filed under agile, BPMN, CMMI, defects, Effectiveness & Efficiency, improvement, ISO9001, ISO9126, KPI, method, metrics, process improvement, product quality, productivity, quality, software quality

Managing Suppliers Effectively to Deliver Your Project Objectives – Quality and Assessment

I was recently asked about an effective method to manage multiple suppliers on a project.  The client had a number of potential suppliers to engage and wanted to know the best approach to ensure the suppliers deliver what was required. … Continue reading

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Filed under alignment, appraisals, attitude, checklist, CMMI, defects, Effectiveness & Efficiency, improvement, ISO9001, KPI, method, metrics, people, PMO, problems, process improvement, product quality, productivity, project management, quality, software quality, templates

Improve project efficiency and effectiveness by dealing with quality part 2

OK, so once you have defined the quality activities required for each deliverable, you are now in a position to start identifying quality requirements for the deliverables – hardware, software, documents, scripts. This is where many projects really fall down … Continue reading

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Improve project efficiency and effectiveness by dealing with quality – Part 1

Despite industry efforts over decades of work, many projects and project managers have difficulties in managing quality. Quality management as a discipline has been with us for a long time.  The two best known project management methods – PMBOK and … Continue reading

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Filed under agile, audits, checklist, CMMI, defects, Effectiveness & Efficiency, improvement, ISO9001, ISO9126, KPI, manager, method, metrics, peer reviews, people, PMO, process improvement, product quality, productivity, project management, quality, software quality, structure, templates

Experiences Reviewing KPI/metric Efficiency Part 2 of 2

C. What data is collected automatically (including tool integration) The only data collected automatically was the defects.  A Microsoft Access based tool was used to record and track defects encountered on the project. Everything else was recorded on paper and … Continue reading

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Filed under alignment, CMMI, defects, improvement, ISO9001, ISO9126, KPI, metrics, organization change, people, PMO, problems, process improvement, product quality, risk, ROI, software quality

Experiences Reviewing KPI/metric Efficiency Part 1 of 2

I’ve spoken a lot about metrics in the past and I was asked by a client to go through the steps involved in reviewing the efficiency of metrics with examples. Using our checklists is cool, but he also wanted some … Continue reading

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Filed under alignment, CMMI, defects, improvement, ISO9001, ISO9126, KPI, metrics, organization change, people, process improvement, product quality, risk, ROI, software quality

Improve Your Business With A Quality Management System Review

Once in a while it’s good to review your quality/business management system (structure, processes, requirements, etc) – we’ll focus on processes for the moment.  The relevance of processes is critical.  They must be useful to your staff, customers, partners and … Continue reading

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Filed under alignment, appraisals, audits, CMMI, improvement, ISO9001, KPI, method, metrics, organization change, people, PMO, problems, process improvement, product quality, risk, ROI, strategy, templates

Peer Reviews Improve Product Quality and Project Delivery

Shock! They actually work! Peer reviews are an effective tool to improve the quality of deliverables – be they documents, code, tests, presentations, etc.  Yet they are still not used in many companies. Why not? People don’t have the “time” … Continue reading

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Filed under CMMI, defects, improvement, ISO9001, KPI, method, metrics, organization change, peer reviews, people, problems, process improvement, product quality, project management, ROI, software quality, Uncategorized

Imagine a Simpler Process

A client recently pointed out to us that we have a recurring theme in our blog posts recently – that of simplifying processes.  This is not surprising as it’s one of our prime company service offerings. Even in a time … Continue reading

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Filed under agile, alignment, improvement, innovation, ISO9001, method, organization change, people, PMO, problems, process improvement, product quality, ROI, software quality, strategy, templates

Starting Again?

We recently conducted some seminars on process and methods use (or disuse).  We did a quick poll of the audiences and were quite startled (though not entirely surprised) with the consistency of results. For all of the effort that has … Continue reading

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Filed under agile, alignment, CMMI, improvement, innovation, ISO9001, method, organization change, people, problems, process improvement, product quality, software quality, strategy