- Your software quality assurance (SQA) program is using the wrong set of metrics to measure how process improvements influence product quality improvements.
- Roles & responsibilities and quality assurance initiatives are not well defined and need to be allocated to individuals that can be held responsible for quality-related issues.
- You are finding it hard to determine a causation between SQA process improvements and an improvement in product quality.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
- Your product is only as good as your process. A robust development and SQA process creates artifacts that are highly testable, easily maintained, and strongly traceable across the development lifecycle, ensuring that the product delivered meets expectations set out by the business.
- A small issue within your development process can have a ripple effect on the level of product quality. Discover what you don’t know and identify areas within your SQA practice that require attention.
Impact and Result
- SQA must be viewed as more than defect analysis and testing. Instead, place greater emphasis on preventative measures to ensure application quality across the entire development lifecycle.
- IT must create a comprehensive SQA plan that delineates roles and responsibilities as they relate to quality assurance. Ensure tasks and procedures improve process efficiency and quality, and formalize metrics that help to implement a continuous improvement cycle for SQA.
- Our methodology provides simple-to-follow steps to develop an SQA plan that provides clear insight into your current quality assurance practices.
- Establish a synchronous relationship between the business and IT to help stakeholders understand the importance and relative value of quality assurance tasks to current costs.
Optimize Your SQA Practice Using a Full Lifecycle Approach Research & Tools
Start here – read the Executive Brief
Read our concise Executive Brief to find out why you should optimize your SQA practice using a full lifecycle approach, review Info-Tech’s methodology, and understand the four ways we can support you in completing this project.Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:
- Optimize Your SQA Practice Using a Full Lifecycle Approach – Phases 1-3
1. Assess your current SQA capabilities
Evaluate and understand your current SQA capabilities, as well as the degree to which metric objectives are being met.
- Optimize Your SQA Practice Using a Full Lifecycle Approach – Phase 1: Assess Your Current SQA Capabilities
- Software Quality Assurance Current State Assessment Tool
- Software Quality Assurance Assessment Workbook
2. Define SQA target state processes
Identify and define SQA processes and metrics needed to meet quality objectives set by development teams and the business.
- Optimize Your SQA Practice Using a Full Lifecycle Approach – Phase 2: Define SQA Target State Processes
3. Determine optimization initiatives for improving your SQA practice
Build your SQA plan and optimization roadmap.
- Optimize Your SQA Practice Using a Full Lifecycle Approach – Phase 3: Determine Optimization Initiatives
- Software Quality Assurance Plan Template
- Software Quality Assurance Optimization Roadmap Tool
- Software Quality Assurance Communication Template
Workshop: Optimize Your SQA Practice Using a Full Lifecycle Approach
Workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.
1 Assess Your Current SQA Capabilities
The Purpose
To help you assess and understand your current SQA capabilities as well as the degree to which metric objectives are being met.
Key Benefits Achieved
An analysis of current SQA practices to provide insight into potential inefficiencies, opportunities, and to provide the business with sufficient rationale for improving current quality assurance initiatives.
Activities
1.1 Conduct a high-level assessment of where to focus your current state analysis.
1.2 Document your high-level development process.
1.3 Create a RACI chart to understand roles and responsibilities.
1.4 Perform a SIPOC-MC analysis for problem areas identified in your SDLC.
1.5 Identify the individual control points involved with passing software artifacts through SDLC stages being assessed.
1.6 Identify problem areas within your SDLC as they relate to SQA.
Outputs
Understanding of current overall development process and where it is most weak in the context of quality assurance
Understanding of assigned roles and responsibilities across development teams, including individuals who are involved with making quality-related decisions for artifact hand-off
Identification of problem areas within SQA process for further analysis
2 Define SQA Target State Processes
The Purpose
To help you identify and define SQA processes and metrics needed to meet quality objectives set out by development teams and the business.
Key Benefits Achieved
A revised list of key SQA tasks along with metrics and associated tolerance limits used universally for all development projects.
Activities
2.1 Establish SQA metrics and tolerance limits across your SDLC.
2.2 Determine your target state for SQA processes within the define/design stage of the SDLC.
2.3 Determine your target state for SQA processes within the development stage of the SDLC.
2.4 Determine your target state for SQA processes within the testing stage of the SDLC.
2.5 Determine your target state for SQA processes within the deploy/release stage of the SDLC.
Outputs
Identification of the appropriate metrics and their associated tolerance limits to provide insights into meeting quality goals and objectives during process execution
Identification of target state SQA processes that are required for ensuring quality across all development projects
3 Prioritize SQA Optimization Initiatives and Develop Optimization Roadmap
The Purpose
Based on discovered inefficiencies, define optimization initiatives required to improve your SQA practice.
Key Benefits Achieved
Optimization initiatives and associated tasks required to address gaps and improve SQA capabilities.
Activities
3.1 Determine optimization initiatives for improving your SQA process.
3.2 Gain the full scope of effort required to implement your SQA optimization initiatives.
3.3 Identify the enablers and blockers of your SQA optimization.
3.4 Define your SQA optimization roadmap.
Outputs
Prioritized list of optimization initiatives for SQA
Assessment of level of effort for each SQA optimization initiative
Identification of enablers and blockers for optimization initiatives
Identification of roadmap timeline for implementing optimization initiatives