The challenge
- Your current software quality assurance (SQA) practice may be using the wrong metrics to measure how process improvements influence product quality.
- Are the roles and responsibilities within your SQA practices well defined? Are they assigned to the right individuals?
- You may have trouble finding the value in SQA process improvements.
Our advice
Insight
- The result is always only as good as the process that created it. When you have healthy development and quality assurance processes, you will develop highly testable and easily maintainable software products and artifacts with high traceability across the SDLC.
- Even small issues with your development practice can have a ripple effect throughout the delivery chain and product quality. Find out what you don't know and identify areas in your software quality assurance process that need attention.
Impact and results
- Software quality assurance is more than (non-)regression and defects analysis and testing. Place more emphasis on measures that prevent undetected errors, and apply them to the whole development lifecycle.
- Your SQA plan must define roles and responsibilities related to creating high-quality deliverables. Formalize metrics that help to improve your SQA practice continuously.
- Our methodology provides you with easy to follow steps to develop your SQA plan.
- Like with all our governance areas, be aligned with your business partners and stakeholders. It will help them understand the importance and value provided by quality assurance.
The roadmap
Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:
Get started.
Read our executive brief to understand why you should optimize your software quality assurance practice using a full lifecycle approach. We show you how we can support you.
- Optimize Your SQA Practice Using a Full Lifecycle Approach – Phases 1-3 (ppt)
Document your current state
Understand and evaluate your current SQA capabilities, and if you are using metrics.
- Optimize Your SQA Practice Using a Full Lifecycle Approach – Phase 1: Assess Your Current SQA Capabilities (ppt)
- Software Quality Assurance Current State Assessment Tool (xls)
- Software Quality Assurance Assessment Workbook (ppt)
Set your target SQA state
Define your SQA processes and metrics to meet development objectives and business outcomes.
- Optimize Your SQA Practice Using a Full Lifecycle Approach – Phase 2: Define SQA Target State Processes (ppt)
Build your software quality assurance plan and optimization roadmap
Prioritize your initiatives and formalize them in a roll-out strategy and roadmap. Communicate your plan to all your stakeholders.
- Optimize Your SQA Practice Using a Full Lifecycle Approach – Phase 3: Determine Optimization Initiatives (ppt)
- Software Quality Assurance Plan Template (doc)
- Software Quality Assurance Optimization Roadmap Tool (xls)
- Software Quality Assurance Communication Template (ppt)