The need for good requirements in our projects is essential, and there seems to be some misunderstanding about why. Although the Business Analyst (BA) elicits the requirements for our projects, I am including it in the Quality Assurance (QA) section because we work very close together in this space. And getting good requirements is critically important to achieving good testing. In fact, it was so important to me that I decided to read the book, Mastering the Requirements Process: Getting Requirements Right 3rd Edition in order to better understand the requirement-gathering process. The first ..read more

Welcome to the final article of the Introducing QA series. If you read the preceding articles in this series, and I hope you did, you know that QA has to do with improving processes and testing. And you know that quality is a moving target. Our intention is to improve the quality of your next project. In part 1 of this series, we mentioned how the Project Management Office (PMO) is focusing on ways to provide more value to projects within ITS. So if you are considering a new project, you may be thinking, “what can the PMO do for us?” The PMO as a whole has a lot to offer, and I can assure you ..read more

  The essential mission of testing is always the same; to answer this question… Are there problems that threaten the on-time, successful completion of our project? There have been thousands of books written about testing over the years, and I could list over 100 types of testing that are described in those books. But that is not going to help you understand testing, at least not at this point. The most important thing to understand about testing here at UConn is the concept (or concepts) of testing, and how it all relates to QA. In the last two posts of this series, we have taken a clos ..read more

“Quality is free, but only to those who are willing to pay heavily for it.” – T. DeMarco and T. Lister In part 1 of this series, What is QA?, we talked about Quality Assurance (QA) and how it means different things to different people. Other factors for these different meanings are the many definitions surrounding the word “quality” by itself. We all know quality is important, and we all have an idea of what it means. But it’s not that easy to define in terms of a project. For some, it means reliability and efficiency. To others, it means fitness of purpose, or usability. As an example, her ..read more

What is QA? “The bitterness of poor quality remains long after the sweetness of meeting the schedule has been forgotten.”  -Anonymous Hello! My name is Mick Stevens and I am the Quality Assurance (QA) person in the Project Management Office (PMO). The PMO is currently focusing on ways to provide more value to projects within ITS. We have a lot to offer to both new and existing projects so we are conducting a series of short presentations to introduce ourselves to small groups within ITS. These presentations intend to show how we can offer value and support in the areas of: Project Man ..read more

Human Resources has successfully transitioned to PageUp, our new recruitment and onboarding system. PageUp is now live for applicants and the University community. Human Resources transferred all active searches into PageUp, including applicant materials (applicants need not reapply).   Applicants may search for jobs via http://jobs.uconn.edu and University users may reach the PageUp dashboard via http://uconn.pageuppeople.com.   Questions may be directed to workforce@uconn.edu or 860-486-1753.   Sign up for PageUp training via Learning@Work:   Regular Payroll   Specia ..read more

And what I really learned… On August 14th and 15th, I attended my first testing conference, ever. Even though testing has always been part of my 30+ year career, I have never had an official testers role. I never even thought of myself as a tester until now. I went to this conference with the intention of getting some ideas on a quality process that could be used for the various projects here at UConn. I dream of the day when all employees are thinking about quality and have a quality mindset. I was initially a little wary about meeting a bunch of seasoned software testers because I had found ..read more

This month, I want to shed a little more light on requirements and test cases. The general consensus seems to be that requirements, at least, should be 100% complete early on in the project, but that is not always the case. Both test cases and requirements are continually refined as we learn more about the product. And we learn more about the product by testing. Michael Bolton has some interesting views in his blog posts below. Very Short Blog Posts: “Insufficient Requirements” Some people say they “don’t have enough requirements to start testing,” or that the requirements are unclear or incom ..read more

This month I’m including a follow-up post to the one from February, Why Do We Need QA Involved So Early….  This talks about more questions that testers can ask, but these questions are not just limited to testers. These are questions that all stakeholders should be thinking about. As stated in the What is QA page, “No single group can assure the quality of any product. We need the whole organization involved or there will be no high quality.” Good questions will create more discussion, which could very well stimulate more ideas. Four (and More) Questions for Testers to Ask Testers inve ..read more

I have seen a lot of confusion around the term, “best Practices” lately. In testing, this confusion usually results in many hours of unnecessary work, which also results in project delays. When project groups are asking for best practices in a new process, what they are really asking for is how other universities are doing the same thing. We are finding that they are all different, so there goes the concept of a best practice. We still need to find the best way for us, but it is NOT a best practice. If it were, we would all be doing it the same way. It may be the best practice for us, though ..read more