Getting the Most From Your Quality Initiatives

Computerworld - Process improvement methods such as Capability Maturity Model (CMM), Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) and ISO 9000-3 offer software developers a standardized framework for fine-tuning development life cycles. Using such methods, it's possible to get your software development life cycle to the point that continuous improvement is the standard operating procedure.
It's possible, but it isn't likely.
Process improvement methods, while a valuable idea, do nothing to directly address error prevention. They attempt only to regulate processes with the intention of preventing errors. Without automation, these initiatives often fall short of their stated goals. Why? The answer is simple. Because they cannot actually implement practices that enforce and support their written procedures.
A short list of my main issues with process improvement initiatives includes the following:

• They are vague. They outline only a plan for quality control. They don't tell you exactly what to do.


• They regulate human interactions, not actual manufacturing processes.


• They rely too much on manual labor to set up and maintain. Certification comes only when you have a written document in place that outlines how you want to improve your processes. This is backward. Certification should come only when you actually have real process improvement, not just a written plan.


• They are difficult to automate, but without automation they decay and eventually become useless.


• The guidelines for auditors and for the process of auditing are vague. Any system that involves human oversight is open to abuse. This part of the system is badly set up. How do you know that your auditor is following the guidelines? How do you know that they aren't interpreting the written procedures in a way that you had not intended?

The real problem with process improvement initiatives is that there is no practical way to get these initiatives off the page and into your software development life cycle. What do you need to measure? How do you behave in the group? How do you improve your processes when errors are found? How do you ensure that those errors don't reoccur? How do you automate process improvement guidelines?
Unfortunately, process improvement methods have precious little to say about such practical details. What is needed is a comprehensive method for addressing these concerns, for really putting automated error-prevention practices into the software development life cycle, and keeping them there. This is the purpose of automated error prevention (AEP).
Based on W. Edwards Deming's total quality management philosophy, the AEP methodology improves software quality and reliability by combining the necessary intelligence, tools, techniques and services to automatically prevent errors