Software Defect Aging

The term defect aging in software testing is very common term not for Testers but usually for Software Test Leads, Test Managers and Project Managers. Defect aging is basically let these chaps know how long it has been the defect under question is not closed or still open and/or how many times the software defect life cycle is performed on that defect. The greater the number of software defect life cycles performed on any defect the greater the cost actually incurred on that defect, and this is the very alarming sign for any project and project team as well.

Defect aging also helps in analyzing the performance of the testing team and software development team. If the defects are fixed and closed in the very first software defect life cycle then this will let the Project Manager that its software development team is on the right track with right performance.

In order to keep track of the things discussed above the organization should have robust test management systems or tools. Defect Aging with manual work will be cumbersome to manage; the tools and TMS do it for you easily. The test management tools keep track of the defect status, who changes it and when changes it and this way it gets automatically find out that how many times the software defect life cycle have been performed on any particular defect.

Quality Family and Definitions

 Quality:  Conformance to explicit and implicit requirements and adherence to defined standards.

Quality Control: Are set of reactive activities (testing, inspection, technical reviews) to uncover defects injected into the product by people and/or processes.

Quality Assurance: are set of preventive activities that prevent defects to be injected into the product/project by people and/or processes.

Quality Improvement: Lessons learnt throughout the project/product life cycle when something went wrong or well. Adopting practices/processes (for future project/product life cycles) that worked well and avoiding those that created a mess. E.g. decide on whether to adhere to inspection of artifacts produced in different life cycle phases or it can be skipped if that not worked (according to objectives set when project is initiated) in some specific cases.

Measuring Quality: The degree to which the conformance to explicitly stated requirements is achieved. Numerically, number of client reported issues, number of defects uncovered during testing, inspection, reviews, effort variance in completing activities.

Exit Interviews

Exit interviews are a critical step in the employee separation process. Yet, in most organization in Pakistan, they are often ceremonial procedures only; standard questions are asked and certain forms are signed. However, exist interviews should be about listening to the employee, and viewed as an opportunity for the management to find out why their organization isn’t and ideal workplace.

HR Do’s & Don’ts

• Don’t schedule the exit interview at the last stage of the resignation process. Conduct it immediately after the resignation notification, so remedial steps can be taken, especially if the person leaving is the key resource.
• Use the interview to learn about issues afflicting other employees and share the top reasons for turnover with the senior management.
• If the reason for leaving is listed as ‘personal’ make sure to investigate whether the employee has ticked this option to avoid listing issues such as harassment or knowledge of fraudulent activities.

Employee Do’s & Don’ts

• Don’t use the exit interview to badmouth your former boss or vent about how you were not rewarded with a promotions. This will only reflect your poor social skills. If the reason why you are leaving is that you had a hard time working for your boss, state the problem. For example, “I was forced to work late on a daily basis which took a toll on me and my co-workers.”
• If the person conducting the interview is at a senior level, convey your thoughts regarding the performance management system and key issues that your department faced.
• If you were being discriminated against because of your religion, gender or ethnicity, state specific instances. If possible, provide evidence/witnesses to back your claim.
• Share your career objectives with the interviewer; he or she may be conducting an exit interview now, but could be recruiting you at another organization in the future.

-Sadya Siddiqui

The writer is a branding consultant and can be contacted via LinkedIn.

How to make impressive impression in an interview?

Most of the time it happens in our professional life that we come across a situation, where people complaining about the job they really deserve but failed to get that. This happens sometime just because people not using the right thing at the right time. I have found some common mistakes or missing attitude in peoples usually going through interviews and failing most of the time.

Mistake # 01: Attire

Most of the time people wear odd stuff that is not according to the job description or position they are being interviewed for. Always try to wear plain shirt and trousers always wear the matching waist-belt with the shoes. Black color is best choice for these trio belt-trousers-shoes, and the shirt can be of any choice but make sure to consider the plain which is consider as formal.

Mistake # 02: Shake hands firmly

Employer and/or people hiring for the organizations want the potential candidates to be with full of energy. No one likes to invest in the type of human resource that lack in the energy needed for the job, for that when you shake hands with the person interviewing you always shake hands firmly (make sure you are not going to break the hands) and with confident each time before starting interview and leaving the interview room. But this is not the case when opposite gender are there in the interview room, reduce the firmness accordingly.

Mistake # 03: Effective use of body language.

Sitting in the steady position throughout the interview gives the indication that you are not comfortable in the interview and you lack in confidence as well. Keep your body flexible enough and use your hands and facial expression to support your responses against each question. Effective use of body language always give the extra advantage and support your answers, fill the gap of the content that you are unable to deliver from words.

Mistake # 04: Never give frown face

Short-tempered people usually give the feeling of dislike when they are asked for an answer which is not directly map with the required knowledge and skills and usually give the bad answers. Always keep in mind that hiring an employee does not only mean to meet the skills required. There are certain things considered. If you are asked such question always try to give your best answers with all smiling face, this will reduce your anger and give the good impression on the interviewer.

These are the potential mistakes that candidates usually make. Using slight tricks one can leverage these mistakes and turn them into his/her favor. This is not a big deal.

All the very success!!!

Understanding CMMI with bird-eye view.

This is the fourth of a series of How to be Software Quality Professional, and we will look two major frameworks that are widely implemented by thousands of organization. As a Software Quality newbie you don’t need to be certified in CMMI or ISO, you only need to know the basics of these standards and process improvement framework. The subsequent posts will talk over in greater detail.

As the Software Industry is growing around the globe and companies are willing to remain intact with their clientele by providing quality software solutions to them. By this willingness there comes an idea of Standards and Best Practices to win the customers or at least sustain them. In order to lower the threats of organization losing their customers some international organization produces some standards and best practices which are widely accepted and practiced around the world in every software development organization to a minimum to maximum extent. This post will describe high level overview of some common quality standards which help in implementing robust Quality Management Systems – QMS

CMMI

CMMI –Capability Maturity Model Integration, one of the robust and widely implemented process improvement standards developed by Software Engineering Institute, Carnegie Mellon University. This process improvement framework provides a five step ladder to achieve the unmatched maturity in software development industry and most of the time CMMI becomes the competitive advantage for the organizations in question. CMMI Levels and their definitions are as follows.

            Level 5:            Continuous Improvement OR Optimized

            Level 4:            Quantitatively Manage

            Level 3:            Defined

            Level 2:            Managed

            Level 1:            Initial OR Performed

In order to achieve any of the above level any organization must implement the corresponding process areas also known as Key Process Areas (KPAs). For instance, If an organization willing to achieve Level 2 maturity it should implement all the applicable process areas correspond to Level 2 (i.e. Managed). All of the levels have some specific goals and generic goals. Specific Goals are related to each process area while Generic Goals are related to individual Maturity Level.

For example, Project Planning is one of the process area belongs to Level 2; it has 3 Specific Goals namely:

1. Establish estimates
2. Develop a Project Plan
3. Obtain commitment to the plan

The generic goals of each maturity levels are as follows:

1. Achieve Specific Goals
2. Institutionalize a managed process
3. Institutionalize a defined process
4. Institutionalize a quantitatively managed process
5. Institutionalize an optimizing process

Mark C. Paulk, Ph.D (http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~mcp/) has rightly defined the need of process improvement and common misunderstanding about process framework implementation he say, “Much of the software crisis is self-inflicted, as when a CIO says, “I would rather have it wrong than have it late, we can always fix it later”.

Implementing processes standards doesn’t make you late on the project; it takes you well on the project with estimated cost, effort and quality.

Working With Passion

With Valentine’s Day just passed, love and passion were and are still in the air. Unfortunately, many people spend more than half their waking hours doing work for which they feel no passion, living a work life gloom and misery.

The passion has to be spontaneous and cannot be forced is an unfortunate myth in our culture; people think you can either love your job or not. However, in reality, passion can be created by tweaking the activities and pursuits you engage in. All it takes is a bit of patience and an open mind.

The process of seeking what you love and turning it into a successful career is possible.

Here are some ways to fire your enthusiasm and passion:

• Be curious

Curiosity is the basis of passion; keep things interesting by taking fresh perspective and a novel approach to your work.

• Break the frustration barrier

You can do this by tweaking the challenge. For example, if an activity is too difficult for you to become enthusiastic about it, worry less about results and concentrate on experimenting and building up skills.

• Remove the chains

Feeling forced into an activity is a sure way to kill passion. Resisting the flow of work and the given tasks will only make you more miserable. Keep In mind that there are consequences for not taking action and remember, you always have a choice.

• Focus on the present

When you find a task overwhelming, don not stress about what needs to be done next month or next year, focus on the immediate action needed. Focus on each step of the marathon, not on how many miles you have left.

No one can be in ‘a state of passion’ all the time. Inevitably, there will be boring and uninteresting routine administrative tasks that you dread. The key is to recognize when you are in one of these bored phases and figure out how to improve the situation and get those passion juices flowing again.

How to get most out of the feedback session?

Empowering Feedback

One of the hardest challenges you may face as a manager is giving constructive feedback to your employees. However, if you follow some simple guidelines, you can make feedback sessions useful rather than stressful.

Effective feedback comprises five key elements:

1. Deliver feedback immediately

Instant feedback will allow the employee to modify his/her behavior immediately. If there was an incident that prompted the feedback, it will fresh in everyone’s mind.

2. Praise and then provide suggestions for improvement

It is critical to begin each feedback session by praising the employee’s accomplishments. Then, make a conscious effort to give constructive feedback and suggestions that will help your employee(s) improve their quality of work, rather than just criticizing their work.

3. Be specific and make positive statements

Specific feedback is more likely to resonate with employees instead of vague allusions or accusations. Instead of saying, “You make too many mistakes” or “Costs are too high” rephrase your statements to say, “I would like you to reduce your error rate,” or “Let’s aim to reduce costs by 25%”.

4. Focus on Improvement

Remember to focus on Improvement instead of just criticizing. Talk about how you would like to see things done instead of focusing on the things you don’t like. Let your employees know that you have confidence in their ability to improve.

5. Invite employee response

After you deliver feedback, invite the employee to respond. Listen to what he/she has to say. There may be circumstances you were unaware of. You may need to investigate resource problems or process issues. You can learn a lot if you give the employee a chance to talk openly.

  

Remember, effective feedback can build employee confidence and help improve quality of output. When appropriate feedback is delivered at the right time, employees have timely and specific information about how to change the way they work. If done in the right manner, feedback can be empowering rather than demoralizing.