Category Archives: software quality

03/10/2010

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

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01/02/2010

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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21/01/2010

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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15/01/2010

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

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28/12/2009

Compliance versus Support – The Chicken and the Egg

To bring some structure and consistency to projects (and business processes in general), audits or QA checks/gates are often performed to assess current practices and to enforce consistency.  But in one of the great ironies, it is often necessary to … Continue reading →

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Filed under agile, appraisals, attitude, audits, checklist, CMMI, Effectiveness & Efficiency, executive, improvement, ISO9001, KPI, leadership, manager, method, metrics, organization change, people, PMO, process improvement, project management, software quality, templates

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10/12/2009

When to resign and find a better company

Why resign?  It depends on what matters to you.  Many people join the company but leave their boss.  How much does your manager matter? There are loads of books, presentations, articles, websites and standards on building and maintaining a continually … Continue reading →

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Filed under alignment, attitude, Effectiveness & Efficiency, executive, improvement, leadership, manager, organization change, people, problems, process improvement, ROI, software quality, startup, strategy

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01/10/2009

Project Performance KPIs – PMO Effectiveness

Rather than some tirade on why metrics are so great for projects, let’s just list some critical ones: Schedule – Planned vrs Actual – preferably via Earned Value Functional – % designed, implemented, tested, released Delivery on Time – Milestones … Continue reading →

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24/09/2009

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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24/09/2009

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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10/09/2009

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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