Testing & QA Management blog
Metrics & Statistics
Improving the efficiency by keeping track of your waste
Feb 17th
All development organizations have a number of recurring events that waste the time of their teams. When reviewing the subject of Defect Lifecycle Management two of the most important undesired incidents are : (1) Rejected Defects – Defects that are reported by the QA and rejected by the product or development teams. (2) Reopened Defects – Defects that are fixed or rejected by the development and are reopened by the QA.
These incidents continually waste the time required to detect, report, review, analyze, assign, and/or fix an important number of defects; and they usually are the result of human error and/or lack of communication More >
Using your Kitchen as a Communication Channel
Feb 1st
Do you want a simple way to keep your team updated on what’s happening on your project, here’s one: a Kitchen Screen.
Most companies have a small kitchen or resting area where people go to make themselves a cup of coffee or grab something quick to eat a couple of times a day. Team members stay there for 5 minutes clearing their heads and informally chatting with colleagues about all sorts of stuff. Did you ever think about putting there, in a non-intrusive way, a small monitor showing important information about your project?
Some years ago my team placed in our kitchen More >
Process Quality Feedback and Escaping Defects
Jan 23rd
I was visiting friends and family last week in Costa Rica. Even though there is a growing software industry in there, my non-technical childhood friends only know that I work in “something related to computers” and for them that means I do everything from installing printers to writing the software for the space shuttle program. One of my biggest entertainment activities was to explain that there is a discipline called Quality Assurance, and that we work side by side with the development teams making sure the released products meet the desired levels of internal and external quality.
During a dinner conversation More >
Testing Outputs that generate added value to the Organization
Jan 17th
Last week we reviewed the operational inputs of the software testing process. This week we should complete the picture by reviewing its outputs.
As part of our analysis we identified six channels that provide input to the testing process (Requirements, Scheduling, Designs, Risks, Defects, and Organizational Feedback); output channels are less in number but bigger in importance and complexity than their input cousins.
The main output channels for the testing process are: - Testing Results - Reported Defects - Formal and Informal Feedback 1. Testing results are the first and most direct output channel.
When you report the scenarios that were tested and the results of More >
The art of transforming testing data into project information
Dec 19th
Last week a colleague asked me for help creating a better testing report for her current project. The task got me thinking about how QA managers handle the same information differently; and how this makes the difference between being treated as “Testing Guy” or as the “Inside Information Provider” of a software project.
I’ve learned that when working with people outside our testing teams we need to think like them, understand what information they need and what format will help them understand it faster and better.
Here are 2 simplified examples of different reports:
Example 1. Test execution report Team A’s Report: Total Tests More >
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