The usual suspects

The usual suspects

In my own words the SQA team members can be classified using the following methods; however first let me frame the definition of an actor or agent.

Galin States that:

“Procedures supply all th details needed dot carry out a task according to the prescribed method of fulfilling that task's function. These details can be viewed as responding to five issues, known as the Five W's,”ⁱ

These are listed in the figure as followsⁱⁱ:

What activities have to be preformed?

HoW should each activity be preformed?

When should the activity be preformed?

Where should the activity be preformed?

Who should preform the activity?

Galin's last question defines who would be a member of the SQA team, the best methodology I have used to assign or map responsibility is termed RASCI and was developed by the PMIⁱⁱⁱ. RASCI allows the mapping of a given task or procedure to a given individual.

The unified modeling language was developed in the mid to late nineties (1995 – 1997) and ratified in an RFP to the object management group. In 1997 IBM et all released the standard 1.0^iv, UML uses the term ACTOR as an agent of any process or procedure.

The ISO/IEC maintains a QA standard, ISO/IEC 17025:2005 although it's primary aim is test equipment the methods may be applied to software as well, although we are primarily concerned with standards such as the ISO 9001:2008.^v,^vi The ISO 9001:2008 standard revises the ISO 9003:1994 standard.

Dave Neilson states that:

The SQA group conducts periodic reviews of its activities and findings with the customer’s SQA personnel^vii.

Within the Quality assurance framework once one is adopted by a given organization; it's actors can be defined as anyone involved with or contributing to the software quality assurance cabinet or board, or assigned individual responsibility for any given component.

The usual suspects will include members of the development team, members of the project management team or office; personnel management for both the project management office and development offices. Then there are the core members of the SQA group should one be defined; these would include both the clients of the the application and the software testers that have been assigned to this given team; in addition to these human resources would be used to determine skill sets in conjunction with management to gage any skills or knowledge gaps that may require consultants or contract work. As well as all of these people there are always the administrative staff that support all operations and develop plans for recovery and backup these include business continuity, disaster recovery and capacity plans.

Unique Contributions:

The project mangers will help guide the development of any procedures and documentation templates needed to conduct the SQA activities including schedules; the real strength of the PMO is that they can map the tasks and deliverables within SQA to milestones and methodologically aligned tasks. The project management office usually defined and develops test cases, documentation for bug reports, feature requests, formal specification documents and aids in the management of the client relationships; although sometimes client relations have dedicated departments.

The development team members will facilitate and aid in the formal functions and procedures set fourth by the PMO; they will also be primary contributors to any documents developed for SQA as they will have the greatest amount of knowledge in regards to the application's functions and history. This includes mapping feature requests to release schedules, developing release schedules in conjunction with the PMO, ratifying and vetting bug reports and correcting or patching any issues that arise. They also document code and are the primary authors for any developer guides for the given application.

Personnel management (the managers) will manage the engagements and loading of the various team members involved in SQA; essentially the tasks and lists including test cases and scheduling for testing require time and commitment from members across the organization, as such management is best positioned to determine who has what available time within the given teams of an organization. The managers and PMO usually determine what and who goes where in a RASCI chart.

Direct SQA members, such as Client Relationship managers, Software Test engineers and analysts, and even End Users will contribute to the communications, development of feature requests, logging of bugs, vetting of test cases and procedures.

Human resources will contribute to SQA if any skills or knowledge is required are not available within the organization. They will facilitate any contracts for resources and resource acquisition.

The administrative staff; such as LAN/Wan admin's and systems analysts will ensure that the lights are on the servers are powered and that capacity requirements are met for the SQA of any given application Quality assurance plan.

The usual suspects include members from every part of a given organization and each will contribute a unique aspect of software quality within the framework that would be adopted; ultimately any business engaged in any kind of production software or otherwise; as the Toyota way states; Quality is everyone's responsibility. 

References 

iGalin, Daniel (Pearson Addison-Wesley, 2004) Software Quality Assurance from theory to implementation (Section 14.1 P.313 ) ISBN 13: 978-0-201-70945-2

iiGalin, Daniel (Pearson Addison-Wesley, 2004) Software Quality Assurance from theory to implementation (Section 14.1 P.313 ) ISBN 13: 978-0-201-70945-2

iiiN.A. (Wikimedia Inc., N.D.) Responsibility assignment matrix [Online] World Wide Web, Available from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Responsibility_assignment_matrix (Accessed on February 9^th 2011)

ivGoogch, Tom (University of Kansas, 2000) The history of UML [Online] World Wide Web, Available from: http://atlas.kennesaw.edu/~dbraun/csis4650/A&D/UML_tutorial/history_of_uml.htm (Accessed on February 9^th 2011)

vN.A. (ISO/IEC, 2010) ISO/IEC 17025:2005 [Online] PDF Document, Available from: http://www.iso.org/iso/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=39883 (Accessed on February 9^th 2011)

viN.A. (ISO/IEC, 2010) ISO/IEC 9001:2008 [Online] PDF Document, Available from: http://www.iso.org/iso/iso_catalogue/catalogue_ics/catalogue_detail_ics.htm?csnumber=46486 (Accessed on February 9^th 2011)

viiNeilson, Dave (The PM Hut, n.d.) CMM and Quality Project Management [Online] World Wide Web, Available from: http://www.pmhut.com/cmm-and-project-quality-management (Accessed on February 9^th 2011)