Maintaining Quality Assurance in Today's Software Testing Environment











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Overview:
 The promoter said: "I'm not changing the technique, I am automating the technique will be published in the quality manual."
The quality assurance person, said, "not following the technique in the quality manual. They worked hard to write these procedures and that are changing in the center of the project. You can not do that."The developer took a deep breath and tried again, "I'm not going to alter, I am getting online. See, this electronic form is exactly like its paper list, except it is online. In this way everyone can see and is easy to fill. No more wondering what happened to him, whose board has stuck. Most of the information is already filled by the process.

" The developer of beams. Certainly the quality assurance person, I finally understand.

"But they are changing," the quality assurance person said.

"There are changing," repeated quality assurance person. "The way you are doing is not what is described in the quality manual. You can not do it now."

"But why? Already know, this automation will save about 40 person hours and 3,000 pages of paper per week. It will pay for itself in about one weeks." The promoter was becoming exasperated.

"No, you must wait until the next release. do not have time now," the quality assurance person

"Yes, that may be, but they ought to get together and redo the whole technique. They would then must alter the quality manual, get approved, redistribute, called on all copies of age. You have no idea how much is at stake. They are in the center of the delivery schedule.

Problems with Traditional Quality Assurance:
 Let us think about the traditional definition of quality assurance. The following definition is taken from the British Standard, BS 4778:

Quality assurance means all planned and systematic actions necessary to provide adequate confidence that a product or service satisfies definite requirements for quality.

Testers and administrators need to be sure that all activities of the check efforts are adequate and properly executed. The body of knowledge or set of methods and practices used to accomplish these goals, quality assurance. Quality Assurance is responsible for ensuring product quality. Program testing is seven of the tools used to decide the quality of program. In plenty of organizations, testers are also responsible for quality assurance, ie to ensure program quality. In the United States, some program development companies have full-time staff dedicated to quality assurance. The reason for this lack of expertise is simple. In most cases, traditional formal quality assurance is not a cost-effective way to add value to the product.A 1995 document by Capers Jones, "Software Quality Assurance for 1995: What Works and What Does not," for research productivity program, gives the performance of the one default disposal practices more common in the industry today : Formal design and code inspections, formal quality assurance and formal tests. The effectiveness of the elimination of errors of these methods separately, is as follows:

Formal Program Testing
37% -60%
Formal design inspections
45% -68%
Formal quality assurance of
32% -55%
No formal methods in all
30% -50%

Inspections of formal design and formal code inspections of 70% -90%
When taken in combination:
The best combination:
Inspections of formal design, formal quality assurance, formal proof of a 77% -95%
When used alone, formal quality assurance is only 5 percent better than any formal process. Unable to decide the relative value when used in combination with other methods. However, seven can argue that, thinking about the following, the contribution of formal quality assurance is minimal.

Traditional Definitions of Quality That Are Not Applicable:
 Quality assurance defines quality as "the set of traits or characteristics of a product or service that bear on its ability to satisfy stated or implied needs." The British Standards 4778, & ISO 8402, International Organization for Standardization (ISO), the definitions of quoting "fitness for purpose" & "in accordance with the requirements.Quality is not a thing, is the measure of a thing. Quality is a metric. What quality measures is excellence. Excellence How much do you have? Excellence is the fact or condition of excelling, superiority, overcoming the goodness or merit.

According to the teachings of Mr. Crosby:

The problem is that the methods presented by experts from the 1980s to the achievement of quality has not worked in the real market-driven world of the 1990s & probably not useful for those responsible for the majority of commercial program in the next decade. For example, Philip B. Crosby is probably best recalled for his book Quality is Free (Mentor Books, 1992). They describes in nontechnical terms of its methods for installation, maintenance, & measurement of a comprehensive program of quality improvement in your business. The major emphasis is on doing things right the first time. Crosby argues that quality is free & that is what is expensive rework to do when they does right at the beginning.The method for achieving quality is "prevention, not cure."The definition of quality is "in accordance with the requirements.The aim of the process quality aim is "zero defects do it right the first time."The measure of success is "the cost of quality."Metaphorically speaking, people writing the definitions of quality & procedures for its implementation were all in some major department store, but the market demand is going to the volume price discount. At the time of this writing, Wal-Mart is the dominant player in this field. Wal-Mart developed its own definitions of quality & invented their own methods to accomplish it. They did his own market research & adapted its services to meet the actual (real) needs of that market. Not only allows designers to guess. The other major point of distinction is overwhelming Wal-Mart commitment to customer satisfaction. This is unlike most commercial program vendors. Note that there is nothing on customer satisfaction in the points Mr. Crosby. Indeed, Wal-Mart is bigger than Microsoft.These concepts are certainly laudable, but need a high level of discipline & maturity to carryover out. The fact is that this set of concepts that does not fit the business process of program development. The reason for this is that assumptions are based on are inaccurate in the process of program development today. This is true in an environment where no two has gone before, & nobody knows what "right the first time" means.
Get the right tool for the job. Excess under planning & product planning are three of the main deficiencies in the program development efforts today. While efforts for critical security or high reliability under planned fail if, in the market today, will also fail if it falls in to the trap of over-planning, trying to generate a lovely product for the environment of technological & market . Employers are more interested in planning to make funds. They won't be bogged down by cumbersome procedures, quality assurance, which could give only a marginal improvement.

Fact: If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

Some sobering thoughts \. I thought it was a truly terrifying experience when I realized that the method of monitoring program that was testing the Microsoft Windows platform would be critical control systems at a nuclear power plant. This was the same operating method that would permit my fellow testers to block the entire network of air defense method of a tiny, but strategic, moving the mouse back & forth quick on a console operator. These are a few examples of the kinds of commitments to program developers & the market are doing these days.Thus, in two finish of the spectrum, they have the PC-based commercial program developers have successfully marketed all types of products semi functional reliable &, sometimes, & at the other extreme, high reliability & security developers critical program should always provide reliable products & operations. Over the years, consumers have come to expect the price & timing of quick release of the commercial program business systems. The real problem began when they began demanding the same price & the release / update schedule people for high reliability. Larger companies, including Boeing & Honeywell have faced a awful challenge to their existence, because they must maintain the best quality assurance practice & compete with the packaging of contraction simultaneously.

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