Peer Inspections: A Pragmatic View
Software peer inspection:
A formal review of a work product by peers. A standard process is followed with the purpose of detecting defects early in the development lifecycle
Aims at detecting and removing software development defects efficiently and early while defects are less expensive to correct
Emerged as an effective approach to Improving software quality
But it is not the PANACEA!
Inspections to:
Check artifacts for consistency, feasibility, understandability at various stages
Check key use cases against measurable parameters-milestone demonstrations
Check requirements compliance
Study metrics related to changes
Inspections using Automated Tools
The Good and Bad of Peer Inspections:
Important components are reviewed by key stakeholders
All artifacts cannot be inspected-both time and cost factor
Major issues related to performance, concurrency found through modeling, experimentation
ROI on meetings, inspections is debatable
Everyone is responsible for Quality assurance
Peer Inspections: A Useful Guideline
Keep the review team small
Find problems during reviews, but don't try to solve them
Limit review meetings to about two hours
Require advance preparation
Critical component deserves to be inspected by several people, preferably those who have a stake in its quality, performance or feature set
Random human inspections tend to degenerate into comments on style and first-order semantic issues
The Old Way and the New
Old gave way to new
To meet changing needs, motivated by the insatiable demand for more software features produced more rapidly under more competitive pressure to reduce cost.
Davis Top 30 principles-Conventional Principles
Make quality #1
High-quality software is p...
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...ed Development Environments, Round-trip engineering
Necessary Technology insertion
Component Based, Architecture first approach
Scope Creep
Use-case approach, Iterative approach, demonstration based review
Risks in Conventional Process overcome by Modern Process: Built-in Risk Management
Too focused on artifacts
Quality Control-Metrics
Analysis Paralysis
Use-case approach
Insufficient Function
Early prototyping
Insufficient Performance
Early feedback on Architecture, Demonstration based assessment
Transitioning to a Modern Process
Some Features of Modern process:
Have an initial version developed early
Address the high risk areas early in the life cycle
Multiple iterations are developed (called spirals, increments, generations, releases)
Focus on domain experience
Process flexibility and change management
Team synergy and cohesion
Software process maturity
More new products need to be introduced and research needs to be done to find out which products will be most popular and profitable.
This process is aimed at ensuring the project being pursued has a potential of delivering by adhering to the allocated time, sticking to the budget and very important, meeting customers specifications (Mott McDonald, 2002). It involves assessing the projects at critical stages (also referred to as gates) in its lifecycle and thus assuring it can advance to the next stage successfully. This function is performed by an independent experienced team, after which they assure the Senior Responsible Owners that the project can progress successfully (National Academies US & National Research US, 2004). There are six critical stages (gateways) in the lifecycle of a project that the independent gateway review team will evaluate and thus provide th...
requires self-assessment and analysis of actions and calls for a change in order to improve
significant and larger gain than the peer-grading and control groups (Sadler & Good, 2006). This idea of learning through self- and peer-assessment may be applicable to self- and peer-quizzing.
1.0 IntroductionIn this report I will be concentrating on the failure of software systems. To understand why software systems fail we need to understand what are software systems. Software systems are a type of information system. This is because a software system is basically a means for hardware to process information. Flynn’s definition of an information system is:"An information system provides procedures to record and make available information, concerning part of an organization, to assist organization-related activities."Humans have been processing information manually for thousands of years, but with the vast increase of demand for knowledge this century has meant that a new method of information processing has been needed. Software systems have provided a new means that is much faster and efficient.
While developing a software many complex activities are required which in turn have dependencies along them. Large software projects require the involvement of programmers, documentation specialists, program managers, architects, database analysts, system analysts, , and trainers and last but not the least testers. Along with their independent responsibilities these persons are also responsible to maintain and keep a check on the software system quality as well.
[2] Excerpted from Nancy R. Tague's The Quality Toolbox, Second Edition, ASQ Quality Press, 2004, pages 359-361.
Every part can be experimentally approved by running examinations that exhibit and test your vision. With acceptance, entrepreneurs will have the capacity to distinguish and address the key dangers in your item or administration and make changes in accordance with legitimately position their image.
Inspection: to measure, examine and test if results comply with requirements done at different process levels
To further shore up his "IT as commodity" theory, Carr cites the fact that major technology vendors, such as Microsoft and IBM, are positioning themselves as "IT utilities," companies that control the provision of business applications over "the grid." Couple this IT-as-utility trend with the rapidly decreasing cost of processing power, data storage and transmission, and even the most "cutting-edge IT capabilities quickly become available to all."
Given the time, it takes to develop large sophisticated software systems it not possible to define the problem and build the solution in a single step. Requirements will often change throughout a projects development, due to architectural constraints, customer’s needs or a greater understanding of the original problem. Iteration allows greater understanding of a project through successive refinements and addresses a projects highest risk items at every stage of its lifecycle. Ideally each iteration ends up with an executable release – this helps reduce a projects risk profile, allows greater customer feedback and help developers stay focused.
This is where good communication within the quality department and with other departments such as production comes into play. Communicating with employees and across departments will help in staying on top of things and being aware of what is going on in each department. (Conlow, 2006). In order to help prevent issues with quality, it is very important that when issues are found, they are immediately reported to the production team. This will ensure that production of faulty parts will cease until the problem is found and repaired. This will also prevent the quality team from continuing to check parts that they know will be faulty. In addition to reporting issues to other departments, there should also be ongoing training and education provided to employees to make sure that everyone is up to date on any new technology or processes deemed necessary for growth. Giving employees an opportunity to learn, grow and develop teamwork skills is important (Conlow,
Expansion of the technology trends hit the industry with another blow, consumers became “innovation-hungry”, constantly searching for new, cutting-edge products, which means a lot of investments in R&D for the industry players.
These procedures and practices are used both by GM and by their vendors. The policies vary from layered inspections, statistics, process failure modes, effects analysis and control plans (Drew, 2011). All quality measures produce a graded system of quality management utilizing quality tools. An example of quality control test is that of speedy response wherever dilemmas are resolved quickly and immediately throughout visual management. Individuals responsible for specific tasks are kept accountable for some corrective actions that may subsist. What General Motors did was ignore this quality measurement when it was dealing with the problems of the Chevrolet
has had a great affect on the software industry. It is a problem that can only