Team Project Summary: Creating a Quality Systems Improvement Plan
For the course project, you will be creating a quality systems improvement plan. First, you will flesh out the details of the chosen situation, including the specific quality objectives to be addressed.
Next, you will design the details of the plan. You will address a series of quality areas: defects and reliability, product quality, customer satisfaction, in-process and project management metrics. For each of these, you will define the specific metrics and practices, and explain the rationale for your choices.
Finally, you will describe how you will assess whether your quality systems improvement plan has succeeded in meeting its objectives, how you will implement the plan, and conclude with a summary that spells out how your plan addresses the quality improvement objectives identified at the outset.
Your output will be a single "Quality Systems Improvement Plan". Each due date will include another section of the plan, as specified above. Teams will work independently to create the problem and the analysis/plan, but will also evaluate another team's approach and provide notes, questions, and suggestions for improvement.
Project Situations
Each team will choose one of the following situations as the basis for further development.
Situation A: Multiple small contract website development projects
This is a company with about 300 developers, distributed worldwide over dozens of locations, that takes up website development contracts for small and medium-sized clients. Projects are typically short, 2 weeks - 3 months, and typically involve 3-6 people. Development teams typically work very closely with clients (much of the development is on-site). The business is highly competitive, so future business depends on costs, meeting time commitments as well as client satisfaction with the product.
Situation B: In-house development team for a large chain store
This in-house development team of about 70 software engineers develops and maintains custom software for inventory control, billing, purchase and marketing support for a large national chain store. The team is currently working on several projects to add B2B capabilities and customer e-commerce capabilities that interface with these mainframe-based legacy software systems. The success of these projects and the transition to these new modes of operations is critical to the store's survival and future.
Situation C: Small game development company
This company with about 20-25 developers has a couple of flagship game frameworks that have been quite successful in the market over the past 2-3 years, with new modules coming out every year or so, as well as 3-4 other game projects currently underway. In the past, bugs in some of their games have necessitated multiple "patch" releases, with significant impact on business and reputation.
Situation D: Fortune 500 imaging company development group
This is a group of about 65 software engineers developing a new version of a photofinishing system. There have been two earlier versions of this system, with total development time on each major release being about 9 months to one year. In the past this team has produced products known for having both functionality and reliability problems. The team has gone to an incremental development process model, with new releases available on about a monthly basis. Due to business conditions, there is a great deal of pressure to get this new version of the product released.
Structure
The final team project report will have the following structure:
Part 1
Section 1: Situation Description
Section 2: Quality Systems Improvement Objectives
Section 3: Current Practices
Part 2
Section 4: Defects and Reliability
Section 5: Product Quality and Customer Satisfaction
Section 6: Project Management and In-Process Metrics
Section 7: Implementation Schedule, Procedure, and Evaluation
Section 8: Summary & Introduction
Part 1
In Part 1 of the project, you will be writing the scenario and current state. Typically, Section 1 will be 2-3 pages, Section 2 will be one page or less, and Section 3 will be about a page.
Outline
Section 1: Situation Description
Section 1 is a detailed description of the current situation at the company. This is a creative exercise - feel free to develop the situation in any way you like. Take the initial situation description provided and add more detail to it. The important thing is to make the situation real to you, so that you will have a stronger feel for what is likely to work and what will not work in the situation. The following is an outline to be followed in your report. (Make sure to use this format, otherwise you will lose credit.) Each subsection includes questions to address in your write-up on the situation. Make sure each of these is addressed in your report.
1.1 Company Business
What is the business of the company?
What is the company's Mission or Vision Statement?
1.2 Purpose of the Process Improvement Project
What is the purpose of the project?
1.3 Goals of the Process Improvement Project
What are the key success factors for the company and for the project specifically?
What are the goals to be achieved?
1.4 Company Culture and Environment
What is the environment and culture like? (Big/small company, hierarchical/bureaucratic/formal/informal, history if relevant, competition etc.)
1.5 Software Product
What is the nature of the software being developed?
1.6 Company and Project Organization
How many people are in the company/project?
How are they organized?
1.7 Quality Approach
What is the current quality approach in the company/project?
1.8 Metrics
Do they use metrics?
1.9 Processes
Do they have lax or rigorous processes?
1.10 Quality & Process Use
What is the attitude of the engineers towards quality and process?
What is the attitude of the management?
Are the processes being followed properly?
1.11 Quality Issues
What quality problems are they having, if any?
Are they achieving their business goals?
What are their major concerns?
1.12 Quality Systems Goals
What is the quality systems improvement effort intended to achieve?
What is the attitude of management and engineers towards this effort?
Section 2: Quality Systems Improvement Objectives
Section 2 is a short bulleted list of targeted objectives for the plan. You may have referred to these as part of the narrative in section I, but this is a summary that serves as the requirements for your work. Be sure to consider the scope of your plan and what could be completed in a reasonable time frame (12-18 months).
Section 3: Current Practices
Section 3 includes current practices in the areas of Defect Removal/Reliability, Product Quality/Customer Satisfaction, and Project Management/In-Process Metrics.
3.1 Defect Removal and Reliability Current Practices Summarize what the company currently does to address defect removal and reliability. Then describe and assess the current practices and issues in the following areas. Each topic can be a subsection.
Inspections and Reviews: Whether they do inspections and reviews or not. Provide details as to what artifacts are inspected etc.
Standards and Checklists: Whether they have standards, checklists etc. Provide specifics as to what are available and what are used.
Tools: Whether they use tools and if so what ones. Describe how the tools are used to improve product reliability and remove defects.
Metrics and Measurements: What measurements and metrics are being used.
Data Collection: Whether they gather data and if so, provide details of how frequently and where data is collected.
Interpretation: What interpretation is done on data collected for above metrics.
Reliability Testing: How they do reliability testing.
Release Criteria: What are their release criteria?
Defect and Reliability Focus: Whether their emphasis has been on defects, reliability or both.
Quality Management Organization and Philosophy: People and management aspects of addressing quality related to defects, if any.
Challenges: Particular challenges that need to be taken into account, if any, regarding defect removal and reliability.
Concerns and Areas for Improvement: What problems they are having with the way they currently do things that need to be addressed by your quality systems design.
3.2 Product Quality and Customer Satisfaction Current Practices Summarize what the company currently does to address product quality and customer satisfaction. Then describe and assess the current practices and issues in the following areas. Each topic can be a subsection.
Standards and Checklists: Whether they have product development standards, checklists etc. Provide specifics as to what are available and what are used.
Tools: Whether they use tools and if so what ones. Describe how the tools are used to improve product quality and improve customer satisfaction.
Metrics and Measurements: What product quality and customer satisfaction measurements and metrics are being used. Focus on measurements and metrics that give insight on product quality and customer satisfaction.
Data Collection: Whether they gather data and if so, provide details of how frequently and where data is collected.
Interpretation: What interpretation is done on data collected for above metrics.
Release Criteria: What are their release criteria?
Product Quality and Customer Satisfaction Focus: Whether their emphasis has been on product quality, customer satisfaction or both.
Quality Management Organization and Philosophy: People and management aspects of addressing overall product quality and customer satisfaction, if any.
Challenges: Particular challenges that need to be taken into account, if any, regarding product quality and customer satisfaction.
Concerns and Areas for Improvement: What problems they are having with the way they currently do things that need to be addressed by your quality systems design.
3.3 Project Management and In-Process Metrics Current Practices Summarize what the company currently does to address Project management and In-Process Metrics. Then describe and assess the current practices and issues in the following areas. Each topic can be a subsection.
Inspections and Reviews: Whether or not they do inspections and reviews of software processes, project plans, and other process and project management artifacts. Provide details as to what artifacts are inspected etc.
Standards and Checklists: Whether they have project management standards, checklists etc. Provide specifics as to what are available and what are used.
Tools: Whether they use tools and if so what ones. Describe how the tools are used to improve process performance.
Metrics and Measurements: What measurements and metrics are being used. Make sure the metrics are indicators of project attributes, even though they may be derived from some product attribute measurements (such as using a count of lines of code as part of a productivity metric).
Data Collection: Whether they gather data and if so, provide details of how frequently and where data is collected.
Interpretation: What interpretation is done on data collected for above metrics.
Reliability Testing: How they do reliability testing. Here, consider "reliability" in terms of the process and estimations. How predictable is the process? How reliable are schedule estimates? And so on.
Release Criteria: What are their release criteria, if any, relevant to the process and project management plan?
Balance between Process Quality and Product Quality and Customer Satisfaction Focus: How does the organization balance the competing tensions of features (scope), schedule, budget, and product quality?
Process Quality Management: People and management aspects of addressing process quality, if any.
Challenges: Particular challenges that need to be taken into account, if any, regarding process quality and process improvement.
Concerns and Areas for Improvement: What problems they are having with the way they currently do things that need to be addressed by your quality systems design.
Part 2
In Part 2 of the project, you will be designingthe quality system addressing Defect Removal and Reliability, Product Quality and Customer Satisfaction, Project Management and In-Process Metrics, and the Implementation Plans/Analysis.
The final report will be submitted in narrative format. Remove all questions and edit your existing outline to create a format that will be submitted to your client. In general you will preserve the four major sections present in this description, but you are free to create/modify other sections as you see fit. The final report will also have a one page maximum executive summary (abstract) at the front of the document.
Also, generally keep your assumptions here consistent with what was said in Part 1 of the project.
Outline
Section 4: Defect Removal and Reliability
This is where you are addressing the requirements listed in Section 2 of Part 1, so make sure you address those goals that have to do with defect removal - be sure to address the concerns and areas where improvement is needed, the processes, practices and metrics you plan to put in place, and the rationale underlying your plan. Typically, this section will be about 2-3 pages of material. Make sure to follow the outline below and address each area listed in the outline.
4.1 Suggested Processes and Practices
What changes / additions you would suggest to the way things are being done, if any. Note that it is OK to say you want to do nothing new in a particular area, because there are no significant problems! Note that you can be quite open-ended in thinking about ways to improve quality, including making technical suggestions for use of particular tools, knowledge websites, alternative development approaches etc. (One of the areas to think about is whether they should focus on defects, reliability or both, and suggest appropriate practices).
- As a checklist, cover the areas in the above section that need changes: engineering practices, metrics definition and gathering, metrics interpretation, etc.
4.2 Suggested Metrics and Usage Plan
What metrics do you suggest they adopt, and how these should be used to achieve their quality goals. (This includes use of quality tools, if needed)
4.3 Rationale This is an important section, where you discuss:
Why you think these changes make sense for the organization / project.
How they will address the concerns and problems.
If you are adding a lot of new stuff, then you might be adding effort to the projects, so you need to figure out how much effort you are likely to be adding and why this is worth it. For example, if they are not currently doing code and document inspections and you suggest them, it would be good to discuss how much effort this will cost a typical project (make up some reasonable numbers) and argue why this is a net win for them.
If you plan that these change should happen gradually over a period of time, mention that and briefly describe what you have in mind.
Section 5: Product Quality and Customer Satisfaction
In this section, you address Product Quality and Customer Satisfaction. Remember that product quality is more than absence of defects, and Section 4 already focused on the defect aspects. So in this section address other quality attributes (features, performance, usability, evolvability, etc.). Also address aspects of customer quality "in the large" (expectation management, support and service, relationship management, etc.). This will entail similar subsections as Section 4, but be sure to focus on overall product quality, not just defect. The specific questions will vary slightly, so that they are related to product quality and customer satisfaction objectives and practices, rather than defect removal. Make sure that the current practices section identifies their objectives in these areas.
You can address product quality and customer satisfaction together, since they are closely related. This part of the document will probably be 2-3 pages.
5.1 Suggested Processes and Practices
What changes / additions you would suggest to the way things are being done, if any. Note that it is OK to say you want to do nothing new in a particular area, because there are no significant problems! Note that you can be quite open-ended in thinking about ways to improve quality, including making technical suggestions for use of particular tools, knowledge websites, alternative development approaches etc. (One of the areas to think about is whether they should focus on product quality, customer satisfaction or both, and suggest appropriate practices).
5.2 Suggested Metrics and Usage Plan
What metrics do you suggest they adopt, and how these should be used to achieve their quality goals. (This includes use of quality tools, if needed).
5.3 Rationale This is an important section, where you discuss:
Why you think these changes make sense for the organization / project.
How they will address the concerns and problems.
If you are adding a lot of new stuff, then you might be adding effort to the projects, so you need to figure out how much effort you are likely to be adding and why this is worth it.
If you plan that these change should happen gradually over a period of time, mention that and briefly describe what you have in mind.
Section 6: Project Management and In-Process Metrics
Use the same subsections as before, but address the items from the point of view of process quality instead of product quality. Typically, this section will be about 2 pages of material.
6.1 Suggested Processes and Practices
What changes / additions you would suggest to the way things are being done, if any. Note that it is OK to say you want to do nothing new in a particular area, because there are no significant problems! Note that you can be quite open-ended in thinking about ways to improve quality, including making technical suggestions for use of particular tools, knowledge websites, alternative process models or project management approaches etc. (One of the areas to think about is whether they should consider process assessment and improvement efforts).
6.2 Suggested Metrics and Usage Plan
What project management metrics and in-process metrics you suggest they adopt, and how these should be used to achieve their process quality goals. (This includes use of quality tools, if needed).
6.3 Rationale This is an important section, where you discuss:
Why you think these changes make sense for the organization / project.
How they will address the concerns and problems.
If you are adding a lot of new stuff, then you might be adding effort to the projects, so you need to figure out how much effort you are likely to be adding and why this is worth it.
If you plan that these change should happen gradually over a period of time, mention that and briefly describe what you have in mind.
Section 7: Implementation and Analysis
In this section, you discuss implementation plans and you provide an overall assessment of your quality plan. You will outline the implementation procedures describe how you plan to implement these new practices and evaluate your report against the original objectives (Part 1). Typically, this section will be about 2-3 pages of material.
7.1 Schedule The timeframe (whether you are introducing the practices all at once or incrementally, and over how long. You may also choose to adopt them conditionally, for example, they will continue only if you get positive feedback etc).
7.2 Feedback How you will obtain feedback on whether the practices are being adopted and whether they add value (you can use any mechanisms: informal feedback, surveys, metrics, assessments, business results etc).
7.3 Responsibilities and Assignments Who will create any artifacts needed (e.g. templates, tools).
7.4 Training Whether you will conduct training, and how it will be done.
7.5 Coverage Do your suggestions address all the original problems identified?
7.6 Effort Required How much effort do they add to the organization overall?
7.7 Value Is the value added worth it? (Quantification is an essential component of this evaluation).
Section 8: Summary
A summary that spells out how your plan addresses the quality improvement objectives identified at the outset. This section will probably be about 1 page. Remember to also provide at the beginning of the report an executive summary with your key assessments and recommendations.
This completes your project report, so do any cleanup needed to make the whole report consistent and complete.
