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QA Team Values for Team Foundation Server

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My QA manager colleague and I have been working on our QA metrics process for the Team Foundation Server test organization.  This has been a fascinating process, and I wanted to give out a little insight into how we're thinking about the problem.

We have 2 different metrics processes focused on 2 different entities:  1) the product quality, and 2) the QA process/team.

The focus of this blog post is on the second aspect - measuring the QA process/team.  We have lots of metrics for product quality, and I'll get into those in another post series (and in particular, how you can use TFS to help track and report them).

To give the metrics process a framework on which to build, we've come up with the following "values" for our team:

  • Self Improving - we're constantly aware of how we're doing and constantly improving
  • Highly Productive - we get a lot of work done in a short amount of time
  • Increasing Capacity - we're gaining the ability to get more done over time
  • Predictable - we can be trusted to deliver what we say when we say it, transparency is a key part of this
  • Customer Focused - because we all want happy customers!

We've started referring to these values as SHIPC to help everyone remember them.  Mnemonics are great, eh?

We use these values as a way to think about everything we do.  For example, if we're developing test plans, are we writing more effective test plans this time than in the past (self improving)?  Are we writing more effective test plans in less time (highly productive)?  Are we able to cover more new features than in previous product cycles (increasing capacity)?  Do the test plans effectively reflect customers priorities, key customer scenarios, customer-focused testing, etc. (customer-focused)?  You get the idea...

Personally, I've found that having these 5 values has really helped provide a foundation for the rest of our metrics development/refinement process. 

Obviously, there are thousands of possible values to choose from.  In coming up with these 5, we spent a good amount of time brainstorming about adjectives we'd like to be able to use to describe our QA team.  Then we went through a bucketing process where we grouped similar adjectives.  Finally, we came up with this set of 5.  Yes, there are overlaps between them, but we really felt like they captured the essence of what we thought of when we pictured a world class QA organization.

Do you use values to guide your metrics process?  Are your values very different from these?  Do you have any others you think a QA team shouldn't live without?

Comments

  • Anonymous
    April 08, 2008
    The Accentient Blog on A Geeky Road Adventure and Multiply your team's voltage by working in parallel....

  • Anonymous
    April 10, 2008
    Cool ideas, had never thought much about it. I've toyed around a little with trying to figure out the causal relationships of our quality -- like a system control diagram with positive and negative feedback loops. The idea being to figure out all the ways you can attack the "system" to improve quality.

  • Anonymous
    April 11, 2008
    Interesting idea Wayne.  I could certainly see how understanding the positive/negative influencers on your quality process interact would help you understand which practices to improve and which to reinforce.  I'd be interested in hearing more about it.

  • Anonymous
    May 19, 2008
    These are the things which can help you evaluate your team. But i think most of it depends upon the motivation level of your team members. Its like Give-and-Take rule, means what are you giving your team members which can motivate them to be highly rated according to your criteria. What are you doing to improve their skills, and to enhance their profile, and then in return what are your expectations.

  • Anonymous
    May 27, 2008
    I agree - motivated employees generally do much better work than non-motivated employees :)  I'll blog more about my philosophy around managing QA teams in particular in upcoming posts. I'll make sure to include the motivation angle too.  thanks!