Philip Lew, XBOSoft
When implementing software quality metrics, we need to first understand the purpose of the metric and who will be using it. Will the metric be used for measuring people, the process, illustrate the level of quality in software products, or drive towards a specific objective? QA managers typically want to deliver productivity metrics to management while management may want to see metrics that support customer or user satisfaction or cost related (ROI) initiatives.
Avoid this gap in communication by delivering software quality metrics with actionable objectives toward increasing or improving a business objective. Otherwise, you are just wasting your time because management can’t see the real value. Metrics just for the sake of information, while helpful, often just end up in spreadsheets that no one cares about. But, not only do you need to learn how to define and develop metrics that connect with potential actions driving toward improvement, you also understand and avoid one of the main pitfalls of metrics, driving behavior which could be unintended! And some of the unintended behavior can have a negative impact on your software quality and tester performance.
When the workshop is completed, the attendees will be able to:
- How to connect your metrics with the most important objectives, those that affect the bottom line, customer oriented metrics.
- How to develop a measurement framework that measures not only typical test results such as defects, but processes and functions and their alignment with business objectives within your organization.
- How to match measurements, metrics, objectives, questions and answers (for your stakeholders)
- How to use metrics to not only evaluate, but also predict what could go wrong.
- How to avoid some of the most common mistakes in developing and implementing metrics programs.
Target audience: Intermediate
Philip Lew, 2014 Workshop
