Better Software Magazine

Outsourcing can be a great way to augment your software efforts. Here are guidelines to help you choose the right provider and ensure that you get what you paid for.

Improving customer satisfaction should be a primary goal of process improvement programs. So how satisfied are our customers? One of the best ways to find out is to ask them. Here are techniques for creating a useful survey and interpreting the results.

Do you have a bug database or defect tracking system? Whether you call them PRs, CRs, SPRs, or some other acronym, logging your software problems into a database rates as one of the simplest yet most effective things you can do to improve product quality. Sometimes these databases turn into the electronic equivalent of a “roach motel” trap--the bugs go in but they don’t come out!

Unlike traditional scripted testing, exploratory testing is an ad hoc process. Everything we do is optimized to find bugs fast, so we continually adjust our plans to refocus on the most promising risk areas; we follow hunches; we minimize the time spent on documentation. That leaves us with some problems. For one thing, keeping track of each tester’s progress can be like herding snakes into a burlap bag. Every day I need to know what we tested, what we found, and what our priorities are for further testing.