SQS Software Quality Systems


T6	Effective Test Process Improvement

Many organisations are adopting, or considering adopting, AGILE Methods to develop software solutions to achieve their business objectives. However, there is a growing awareness and appreciation that defining and implementing efficient business processes across an organisation offers tremendous competitive advantage. In fast changing business environments, the ability to change processes rapidly is paramount. Software solutions and IT underpin many key business processes. Therefore, by definition having a flexible process framework defined for all aspects of your software development and procurement lifecycle (SDPLC) is a competitive weapon. This framework may need to support agile, plan-driven or indeed hybrid combinations with the resulting variety of test approaches. Real value from process improvement comes from explicitly focusing process improvement and associated models/methods to achieve measurable performance results for your business such as time and cost reductions and quality and productivity improvements. Many change approaches provide basic guidance but there is little specific support for how to actually link process improvement to business goals in a meaningful and measurable way. There is little support for rapid lightweight techniques to document your processes to ensure they are usable and effective. There is little guidance on how to successfully transition to AGILE methods or how to establish flexible process frameworks (encompassing hybrid combinations of agile methods and plan-driven methods) or how to overcome test-related challenges with agile practices across the SPDLC. This tutorial will provide a brief overview of AGILE testing practices and test process improvement models such as TPI and TMMi and then present a proven way to do process improvement that will get senior management commitment AND buy-in from project practitioners. It will cover how to implement a flexible process framework (with a particular focus on SPDLC test activities). It will provide proven solutions for the typical process improvement issues and pitfalls such as: Overcoming barriers to change when introducing new approaches What to keep and what to throw away Unclear goals and poor images of success including no measurements Lack of buy-in from staff (all levels) Over emphasis on process documentation Exercises, examples and handouts will be used throughout to ensure participants leave with practical ideas and actions to improve the effectiveness of their test process improvement efforts. Most process improvement initiatives fail. Using models like TPI, TMMi, CMMI to achieve process maturity ratings can deliver some benefit including marketing value but process as a goal in itself has a high risk of failure. Attendance on this tutorial will reduce the risk of failure.