AM Tutorial (8:00 a.m. - Noon)
by Herb Krasner
Getting Started level
Summary:
You have just moved into a new role in your organization that is concerned with the quality of the software that is produced and delivered by your group/company. This role might be as a tester, as an SQE (software quality engineer) specialist, as designer of quality aspects, as a review leader, as the leader of a team whose quality needs improvement, etc. From a practical perspective, the question is how do you make quality happen? Inquiring minds need to know, and this tutorial is designed to give you the starter knowledge to do it.
Abstract:
One of Dr. Deming’s 14 Total Quality Management (TQM) principles urges us to cease our dependence on testing, back-end inspections, and process audits to achieve quality. At that point it's too late to do much about defect correction at the end of the development cycle -- the pressure is on to ship the product. Introduction of quality activities early and often is the only way to achieve truly "built in" quality. And thus is born the new specialty of Software Quality Engineer (SQE), whose role is to augment the development team and ensure that quality activities are integrated from the very beginning of the lifecycle. Many modern organizations are struggling to understand the value of and need for a traditional SQA function at all. The SQE is better equipped to be a catalyst for quality improvement, which begins with a mature organizational process. This is clearly evidenced by many leading companies who have been working at achieving higher software process maturity for over 10 years, and have reaped the associated software quality (and productivity) benefits (Krasner, 2001). The modern SQE nurtures the quality realization process with best practices for quality, and acts as a customer advocate in software quality matters. The modern SQE has a responsibility to teach software quality principals and practices, and to lead the organization in the practical application of the teachings. Knowledge of the foundational subjects of software quality engineering can be gained by pursuing the American Society for Quality's (ASQ) Certified Software Quality Engineer - a credential that is highly recommended for modern SQE professionals. How many of your software quality colleagues have the knowledge and assume the responsibilities outlined above? If not many, then how can your customers really expect the delivery of high quality software systems?
Presenter Bio:
Herb Krasner is currently a Senior Lecturer in Software Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin where he teaches undergraduate and graduate classes in software engineering, data structures, database engineering, agile methods and software process improvement. Also, he performs and supervises research in the science of design, the economics of software engineering, and software quality and process improvement. As Founder, Chairman and former Director of the Software Quality Institute (SQI) at the University of Texas, he was largely responsible for creating and shaping the software engineering educational outreach organization into a successful business entity. He is also the founder of the Austin Software Process Improvement Network.
As President of Krasner Consulting, Herb has had successful client engagements with many commercial companies and various agencies. Herb has published over 55 papers, articles and book sections in peer reviewed literature, and has spoken at many professional conferences and meetings. He is a book series editor for the IEEE Computer Society Press and a member of their Publications Board. He is active in both the ACM and IEEE Computer Society, and served as past chairman of several international conferences, as well as, Director of the ACM Scholastic Student Programming Contest. His professional awards include the ACM Distinguished Service Award and ASQ Golden Quill Award.
