Service Description: Software Success Improvement

Software Success Improvement

• Have your customers asked you to improve the way you develop, test and deploy software?
• Have you already tried process 'improvement' but found it difficult to implement change?
• Have you found it difficult to motivate your people to support change?
• Do your management and business sponsors demand improved communications to take more effective decisions?
• Have you implemented change, but found it difficult to quantify the benefits?

A people problem, not a technical problem

Improving software quality is no different to any other form of organisational change – it’s really difficult to get people to change their behaviour. Using improvement models can help a little, but we have found again and again that the real barriers to change are organisational and cultural and NOT technical. We will help you to look at your organisation from a different perspective. You will see that the pathway to improving software in the context of your own organisation will be unique.

Improving software requires changes to three different areas; organisation, people and process. Process is important, and process models can be helpful, but if process is your obsession, lasting, beneficial change in a knowledge-based organization will never happen. The organisation seeking to improve software has constraints, objectives and budgets to work within and it’s critical that you fully understand these and that value for money can be demonstrated.

Your people already know why they "are where they are" and are already delivering much good work. Obviously, if you ignore the value of current work the changes you recommend are bound to be resisted. It only takes a few people to resist – and failure in your efforts is guaranteed. Whether you have a "hero culture", or an isolated, inappropriately skilled, misled or misguided group of people to work with, tell us what your challenges are and we’ll discuss our approach with you, face to face.

It's about goals, focus and values, not 'best practice'

Textbook, 'best' practice is often inappropriate. Although it is easy to generate ideas for improvement (by asking practitioners, or using a model), identifying achievable changes whose benefits can be measured is less easy. Our approach to change is pragmatic and consensual. We will help you to avoid making the most common mistakes, give your improvement project a good foundation, stay focused and deliver lasting, beneficial change.

We have summarised our view on the fundamentals of testing in The Tester's Pocketbook. Buy a copy and you'll see where we're coming from. Alternatively, if you want to see the 'Test Axioms' we've set out, take a look at the axioms here. If you are interested in how we approach testing improvement - let us know and we'll send you a FREE COPY of the pocketbook.

Use a change process, not a test improvement model

Although the path to improvement is unique in your organisation, we strongly recommend you adopt a reliable change process. There are many, many alternative change management processes out there. The one we advocate is John Kotter's approach. Not only is it simple, it has become the most popular over the last ten years. Over 500,000 copies of his classic change management and leadership book, "Leading Change" have been sold.

We have adapted his eight stage change process to fit software success improvement initiatives. We summarise the eight-step process below.

1. Set the scope of your software success improvement programme.
2. Get a change process in place.
3. Work the process.
4. Focus on Organisation, Culture and People and then fit your process to all three.

If you need to improve and testing is a focus get in touch and we'll arrange to meet you.