CSQA Practice Questions

Risk management is the process used to identify, analyze, and respond to a risk. Identifying, analyzing, and prioritizing risks require knowledge of the business functions, and user involvement. The Project Management Institute's Project Management Body of Knowledge(PMBOK) defines the following four processes to address risk management. The PMBOK also notes that different application areas may use different names for these four processes.

Risk Identification

Risk Quantification

Risk Response Development

Risk Response Control

This discussion of risk management addresses six processes, which have the following mapping to the PMBOK processes.

Risk Identification

Risk Identification – this process answers the question "What are the risks?"

Risk Quantification

Risk Analysis - this process answers the question "Which risks do we care about?"

Risk Prioritization - this process answers the question "How are the risks prioritized?"

Risk Response Development

Planning - this process answers the question "What should be done about the risk?"

Risk Response Control

Risk Resolution – this process executes the plan that was developed in the prior step.

Risk Monitoring – this process evaluates the action taken, documents the risk results and repeats the cycle of identification, quantification and response.

A mission statement explains why a company, organization, or activity exists, and what it is designed to accomplish. It clearly and concisely describes the work that is done, providing direction and a sense of purpose. The mission should focus on products and services and be customer-oriented. During implementation, the mission is constrained by the vision and values. Examples of mission statements include:

From Arco Transportation Company Information Services: "The mission of information services is to provide the appropriate computing network, products, and services and support of the strategies, goals, and objectives of the company."

From the Ford Motor Company (listed in their Ford Q-101 Quality Systems Standard, January 1986): “Ford Motor Company is a worldwide leader in automotive and automotive-related products and services as well as in newer industries such as aerospace, communications, and financial services. Our mission is to improve continually our products and services to meet our customers’ needs, allowing us to prosper as a business and to provide a reasonable return for our stockholders, the owners of our business.”

Vision

Leaders provide a vision, which is a clear definition of the result to be achieved. Organizations without a vision flounder. The vision establishes where the organization desires to move from its current state. It gives everyone a direction to work towards. Senior management should establish the vision, ensuring how it contributes to the business is clear. A vision is simple and concise, and it should be understood and supported by all.

Examples of visions include:

From the Quality Assurance Institute: “Our vision is to produce competent and successful quality assurance analysts.”

From the Eastman Kodak Company: "We see ourselves now and in the future as a company with a strong customer franchise, known for reliability, trust, and integrity in all relationships. Our business will be based on technologies that have evolved over our long history, and which will give us unique advantages over our competition. These technologies will span our core businesses, and will also go beyond boundaries we can see today.”

From the Ford Motor Company: "A worldwide leader in automotive and automotive related products and services as well as in newer industries such as aerospace, communications, and financial services."

President Kennedy had a vision of putting a man on the moon before 1970.

QA analysts should have a vision of improving quality, productivity, and customer satisfaction.

Level 2 organizations have installed basic management controls. Policies for managing a software project and procedures to implement those policies are established. Planning and managing projects is based on experience with similar projects. Realistic project commitments are based upon the results observed on previous projects and on the requirements of the current project. Project managers track software costs, schedules, and functionality. Problems in meeting commitments are identified when they arise. Software requirements and the work products developed to satisfy them are baselined and their integrity is controlled.

The capability of Level 2 organizations is summarized as disciplined, because the ability to successfully repeat planning and tracking of earlier projects results in stability. To be certified at Level 2, organizations must document (define), practice, enforce, train, measure, and improve the following six key process areas:

Requirements Management

Software Project Planning

Software Project Tracking

Software Subcontract Management

Software Quality Assurance

Software Configuration Management

Generally, a SLA should contain clauses that define a specified level of service, support options, incentive awards for service levels exceeded and/or penalty provisions for services not provided. Before having such agreements with customers the IT services need to have a good quality of these services, Quality management (link is external) will try to improve the Quality of service (link is external), whereas the SLAs will try to keep the quality and guarantee the quality to the customer.

Typical Service Level Agreement Contents:

Services Delivered

Performance

Problem Management

Customer Duties

Warranties & Remedies

Security

Disaster Recovery

Termination

There are four main testing stages in a structured software development process. They are:

Unit Testing

These tests demonstrate that a single program, module, or unit of code function as designed. For example, observing the result when pressing a function key to complete an action. Tested units are ready for testing with other system components such as other software units, hardware, documentation, or users.

Integration Testing

These tests are conducted on tasks that involve more than one application or database, or on related programs, modules, or units of code, to validate that multiple parts of the system interact according to the system design. Each integrated portion of the system is then ready for testing with other parts of the system.

System Testing

These tests simulate operation of the entire system and confirm that it runs correctly. Upon completion, the validated system requirements result in a tested system based on the specification developed or purchased.

User Acceptance Testing

This real-world test is the most important to the business, and it cannot be conducted in isolation. Internal staff, customers, vendor, or other users interact with the system to ensure that it will function as desired regardless of the system requirements. The result is a tested system based on user needs.

Process improvement must be accomplished by emphasizing teamwork. The PIT component addresses this need. Every member of the organization should become involved in the process improvement process. Not everyone must be on a team, although as many teams as practical should be organized. The two methods below are recommended for creating the teams.

Natural Work Group

Natural work groups, such as a system development project team, characterize the way companies currently organize their employees. Using natural work groups for a PIT is the easiest, quickest, and least confusing method. Generally, these teams already exist, and the members have established working relationships. They are also usually aware of improvements that could be made to improve the effectiveness of their work group.

If natural work group teams elect to address problems that impact beyond their team, the improvement process should support the collaboration of multiple teams working on problems with a broad scope. The measurement system would be required to track and report these instances, so appropriate reward and recognition would occur for these shared team efforts.

Interdepartmental Teams

This method of organizing teams across departmental boundaries promotes interdepartmental teamwork and contributes to breaking barriers (and problems) that exist within organizations.

It is also an excellent way to address problems that affect more than one work group or department. Because these types of problems are typically more complex, it is only recommended as a method of organizing when the PITs are mature.

There are three COQ categories:

Prevention- Money required preventing errors and to do the job right the first time is considered prevention cost. This category includes money spent on establishing methodsand procedures, training workers and planning for quality. Prevention money is all spent before the product is actually built.

Appraisal– Appraisal costs cover money spent to review completed products against requirements. Appraisal includes the cost of inspections, testing and reviews. This money is spent after the product or subcomponents are built but before it is shipped to the user.

Failure– Failure costs are all costs associated with defective products. Some failure costs involve repairing products to make them meet requirements. Others are costs generated by failures, such as the cost of operating faulty products, damage incurred by using them and the costs incurred because the product is not available. The user or customer of the organization may also experience failure costs.

The following figure shows a few examples of the three costs of quality that illustrate the types of activities in each of the categories. Experience has shown that a small group of knowledgeable people can develop estimates for the COQ categories. The estimate does not have to be highly precise because the amounts will be so large that even errors of plus or minus 50% would not affect identifying the actions that need to be taken to reduce the COQ.

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The two types of models that exist, staged and continuous, are discussed below.

Staged models

Staged models are composed of a number of distinct levels of maturity. Each level of maturity is further decomposed into a number of processes that are fixed to that level of maturity. The processes themselves are staged and serve as foundations for the next process. Likewise, each level of maturity is the foundation for the next maturity level.

The Software Engineering Institute’s Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) is an example of a staged model, although it now has a continuous representation. See page 140 for more information.

Continuous models

In the continuous model, processes are individually improved along a capability scale independent of each other. For example, the project planning process could be at a much higher capability level than the quality assurance process.

ISO/IEC 15504 (SPICE) is an example of a continuous assessment model as is the continuous representation of The Software Engineering Institute’s Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) a continuous process reference model.

Level 1 – Controlling

The role of the quality professional at this level is to assure that the people in the IS function do what management wants them to do. At this level, the quality professional is frequently viewed as an inspector or police person.

Level 2 -- Defining

The role of the quality professional at Level 2 is to create and improve individual work processes. The quality professional should maintain an inventory of work processes, determine which processes are more critical to accomplish the mission, and then develop and/or improve those processes in the sequence of importance. There is normally an infrastructure established to do this, which may be called a process management committee or a standards committee.

Level 3 -- Aligning

The role of the quality professional at Level 3 is to create an environment, which is focused on meeting organizational needs. In other words, the quality professional must help the IS function define their core competencies. These competencies should be based on the needs of the organization as normally expressed by the user of the IS function. At this level, the energies of the quality professional will be directed toward ensuring that those competencies, which support the IS mission, are supported effectively.

Level 4 -- Adapting

The role of the quality professional at Level 4 is to emphasize adapting the processes to the specific project needs. In other words, prior to commencing a project, the processes will be customized for that specific project. This is equivalent in automobile manufacturing to rearranging the production line to build a specific automotive model. The quality professional will assist in creating the processes and skills needed to adapt the work processes to specific product needs.

Level 5 -- Champion

The role of the quality professional at Level 5 is to champion innovation and creativity in the way work is performed. Professional work processes are a combination of the skill sets of the individual, plus the detailed step-by-step procedures in the work process. In the start of a new work process, the procedures are minimally defined and thus the success of a project is heavily dependent on the skill set of the individuals. However, over time the combined learning of the individuals performing the process can be incorporated into the process. Thus, as processes mature they move toward more emphasis on the process and less emphasis on the need for highly skilled individuals. By the fourth level of maturity, the processes are highly optimized.

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