Steven R. Rakitin
21 Whitney Lane
Upton, MA 01568
www.swqual.com
Phone: 508.529.4282
Fax: 508.529.7799
Software Verification & Validation: An Overview for Practitioners
The increasing demand for complex software coupled with stiff competition for experienced software engineers has put many companies in the uncomfortable position of having to trade off Quality against Time to Market. By applying proven Software Verification & Validation techniques, you organization can improve Quality, which lowers life cycle costs and increases profits, and meet aggressive Time to Market goals.
I've developed a one-day workshop aimed at providing you and your staff with proven tools and techniques that can help save your organization time and money. This workshop has recently been presented in public forums including the 1997 Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference in Portland, Oregon and can now be presented on-site to your staff. An on-site workshop offers the opportunity to tailor the material to meet your organization's specific software quality objectives and development environment.
The workshop covers the following topics:
This informal, interactive workshop is based on the book: Software Verification and Validation: A Practitioner's Guide published by Artech House. The audience for this workshop includes QA Managers, Quality professionals, Software Engineers, and Project Managers.
Software Development within an ISO 9000 Quality System
Many organizations have found it particularly difficult to include their software development activities within an ISO-9000 Quality System. Organizations frequently have trouble interpreting and applying the ISO requirements to their software development process in a manner that both complies with the ISO-9000 requirements and at the same time and is not overly burdensome.
This common sense course provides insights into software development processes and procedures that:
This two-day course has been designed specifically for software process and quality professionals, software engineers, and software project managers who need to develop cost-effective processes and procedures that will enable their projects and/or organizations to comply with the ISO-9001 standard.
Developing Accurate Estimates and Schedules Using the Yellow Sticky Method
One of the most difficult things for software engineers to do is estimate a software task. As a group, software engineers have had little or no training in estimating and scheduling and tend to be overly optimistic. So it's not surprising that software projects more often than not, miss their schedules.
To address this problem, in many organizations Management imposes delivery dates for new products. With the end date given, the project team is then forced to schedule backwards. Schedules developed in this manner are almost always bogus as tasks are estimated based on time available rather than time required. Projects with unrealistic schedules typically suffer from low morale and are of lower Quality. Not surprisingly, scheduled-backwards projects almost always are late.
A variety of high tech Project Management tools and techniques have been developed to address this problem. While most of these tools are good, they've met with varying degrees of success. For many companies, Work Breakdown Structures (WBS) and COCOMO models just don't fit into their environment.
A simple and decidedly low-tech solution to this problem has evolved into a very powerful tool for helping people develop more accurate estimates and schedules. This technique is commonly known as the Yellow Sticky Method as it uses Yellow Post-It Notes to help build accurate schedules. This method has been successfully used in a wide variety of industries by hundreds of companies in the US and Europe.
Learning this simple technique takes only a few hours and can be performed on-site with your entire staff. Imagine being able to develop accurate schedules and estimates and then actually meet them! Using the Yellow Sticky Method has enabled many companies to significantly improve the accuracy of their estimates and schedules. As a result, they have been able to deliver Quality Software On Time -- saving significant amounts of money, time, and resources.
If you are interested in learning how to...
...this training can help you.
For further information on this and other courses offered by Software Quality Consulting, please visit www.swqual.com
Entry added August 14, 1998.
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