Application Development > QA, Reviews and Standards

QA in an Agile environment is very different…are your teams ready? Here we look at how QA needs to evolve in order to best support Agile development practices.

There’s no manual for a recession, so how do you stay effective in a bad economy? In this article, we look at how you as project managers can strive to balance the reality of managing projects in a tough economy with the desire to still do things “the right way”.

The “definition of done” is a widely debated and often emotional topic in Scrum circles. Part of the challenge is establishing proper context. Here is an adaptable approach for coming to consensus on what “done” means at the User Story level for your projects and products.

Technical debt describes the cumulative consequences of cutting corners in software development, but it escapes the attention of many project managers as they focus on scope and schedule. That’s a mistake because it impacts both. Here are questions to help you ascertain the real state of technical affairs.

It’s so easy for you to fail in your role as a project manager during a quality assurance initiative. Let us continue to count the ways…

It’s so easy for you to fail in your role as a project manager during a quality assurance initiative. Let us count the ways...

How can companies foster collaboration between business analysts and quality assurance professionals? New research recommends three steps to strengthen alignment between these complementary roles — and improve project outcomes.

Quality is hard to build and maintain, and very easy to destroy. Here we look at some of the areas where those bad decisions are commonly made--and see if there's help in navigating through the minefield.

Agile methods make the most of closer ties to the business and customer to get rapid feedback on functionality. This works great when customer engagement is high--but runs into problems when engagement is lacking. Learn about some warning signs and engagement models that can help.

Just who is in charge of your user acceptance testing? For many, it belongs in the hands of business analysts and corresponding business owners. These individuals collaborate to create the test plans and test cases and then determine how to implement and track their progress.

As you promise to drop 20 pounds, exercise three days a week and obtain a better work/life balance, don’t forget to add a few project management best practices to your resolutions.

A well-functioning Scrum project requires three distinct roles, separate but equal: the Product Owner oversees what is being delivered on behalf of the customer; the Scrum team controls how they work; and the Scrum Master facilitates and acts as keeper of the process on behalf of the organization.

If you’re struggling to implement PMO processes in your organization, here is a no-nonsense, lean PMO process set that focuses more on delivery—and less on bureaucracy.

When possible, the effectiveness of a quality assurance management program involves three interconnected components.

While many organizations now have standard processes for managing change, effective change management needs more than just a process. Most projects have room for improvement, and in this article we look at how a PM can lay the foundation for strong change management right from project initiation.

Quality always figures as one of the most important and critical factors that a company uses to differentiate its software products from the competition. However, many times this does not translate into reality.

We all want Subject Matter Experts, but what happens if we get Subject Matter Zeros? How does that impact your schedule, and what about team members who have “other project commitments”? Before you know it, that six-month schedule that looked pretty comfortable is looking like a fairy tale.

Set for release at the end of 2010, the Practice Standard for Project Estimating draft is now available for comment.

Government contractor Johnston McLamb shares details about the benefits of pursuing process improvement via a more rigorous CMMI rating. Such a trend is spreading among smaller IT firms worldwide, according to CMMI program manager Mike Phillips.

In the ever-increasing speed trip down the ramp of badly made cost-cutting decisions, many mainstream manufacturers are compromising on the quality of their products. To help address this, we all need to more carefully monitor the quality of our supplier goods.

During the last few decades, many quality management programs have delivered real benefits to many organizations across the world in a number of areas including cost control, process improvement, customer retention and product development. That is why organizations have embraced the concept of quality management as a key business enabler and a critical success factor.

In the face of unrealistic schedules and ill-defined or changing requirements, defects on software development project are inevitable. But the rush to report a resolution can make the problem worse or create new ones. Here is a rigorous, six-step approach to issue-resolution that ensures 'fixed’ means fixed.

Testing is not the same as quality, and it’s not a replacement for it either. Our writer hopes to help you identify some ways that you can improve how you manage quality on your own projects--and hammer home that if you plan for quality in the first place, you won’t need to spend so much time fixing the things that have gone wrong.

Why are we afraid to face the truth about project failures and how can we overcome it? For starters, we need to view failure as part of the learning process, a required step on the road to success.

While there are advantages to keeping Stand-Up meetings focused and short, there is more to the process than the typical ritual. Here we present five key things you should keep in mind before and after each meeting.

Welcome to the PMO! Does your Program Management Office have a plan for helping new project managers? More than any other function, the PMO varies hugely from one organization to the next--and even from one division to the next. That means that there will always be a ramp-up period for anyone entering as a project manager--and yet many PMOs make no allowance for this.

To help manage the ambitious project to simultaneously update its four standards, the Project Management Institute created a new position: the content integration analyst. Beth Ouellette was chosen to fill the role, and here she shares a first-hand account of the effort to “harmonize” the standards.

A recent Aberdeen survey identified the top pressures in managing IT projects as well as “best-in-class” practices for picking the right projects and managing portfolios and resources.

PMOs are responsible for establishing standards--but what should those standards be? This article will explore a few of the things to consider when establishing a model for project process compliance.

Making the most out of one of the most difficult parts of a project can reap tremendous rewards.

Just calling a practice “best” does not make it so. But for many PM practitioners, the term “best practice” appears to represent the business practice equivalent of a “get out of jail free” card--wave it around enough, and critical thinking seems to be banished. It's time for a new outlook on this misused term and concept.

Integrated support for customer product planning, requirements definition, release and iteration tracking, and defect and test management.

Quality is a nebulous term that is often misunderstood and misrepresented. In this series of articles, our writer presents a three-stage quality management process of quality planning, quality assurance and quality control using a simple example of purchasing a submarine sandwich (hold the pickles, please!).

This writer has seen some truly atrocious project communications where the PMO seems at a loss to be able to assist. In this article, he looks at a few ways that the PMO may be able to assist in building a communications model that brings consistency without burying the PM in “dashboard hell”.

If you want to ensure that your organization can differentiate itself based on quality, you need to ensure that everyone is focused on achieving that goal. Quality goes far beyond the individual project, and this article looks at some of the steps needed to ensure that you are capable of delivering quality projects on a consistent basis.

Think twice--and hard--before pulling the trigger on a team member for a mistake. Giving someone a second chance is your opportunity to build a team--not the chance to exact punishment.