A new way of looking at risk in software projects. One that aims to help make consideration of risk less of a cosmetic exercise and turn it into something that makes a difference.

Software projects fail, regularly. They need to become more resilient, resiliency will ensure they are more able to deliver, or at least do less harm. Principles that underpin are more resilient approach are outlined here.

Article originally published by Project Manager Today

We have just hit something that occurs time and time again; that is testing the interface without looking at what is going on below the surface. It is often in the depths that the really important stuff occurs and yet this is where we often find no one is looking.

Despite the trend in software development that thinks of requirements as old hat many people still do and always will work with requirements. This fact makes the observations that follow relevant and likely to remain of relevance.

When I get into the client’s office this morning I have to do a conference call to look at how well the integration of two of their systems (via a third) is going. This follows a call last Thursday and there is one already scheduled for tomorrow. The original plan was to hand this over to the unit I am setting up at the end of December to be tested. I had that plan changed in early December to one where the construction team would actually Integrate it (see article here) before handing it over for test. We also defined a set of basic integration tests we wanted the construction team to demonstrate at the time of handover. Four weeks were allowed for the integration prior to the handover.

When should you classify a test as Failed? This sounds such a simple question and you may think the answer is obvious; however there are some factors that mean a well thought out approach can have significant benefits to the test manager.

If you want testing to be effective and want it to be manageable in the wider sense of the word (understood by others, amenable to peer and expert review and controllable) then everything has to be focussed. Each constituent part of the effort needs a clear purpose and this has to extend down to quite a fine grained level. Macros level building blocks such as Functional Test, Performance Test and Deployment Test don’t do it. What is required is to break the work into a set of well defined heterogeneous testing tasks each one focussing on certain risks.

I have just encountered an old friend of mine; one that I see most places I go. My friend is that recurring defect - the different date format bug. In its most common and insidious form it is a mix of DD/MM/YYYY and MM/DD/YYYY representations of dates as strings. Date format clashes of any sort cause defects but this is the worst ones because for many cases it appears to work waiting to create problems in future or corrupting data that passes through it.

We have recently started working with a new client on changes to their testing and delivery practice. The aims is to increase the throughput of development and at the same time accelerate delivery and maintain quality. This has been running for a few weeks now and enough time has elapsed for us to start hearing stories about previous projects and what went well and what was problematic.