I received some material from Capers Jones, well known author and international lecturer (I don’t need to present him, but just in case: http://www.namcook.com/aboutus.html). Capers Jones is vice president and CTO of Namcook Analytics LLC.
This is a good synthesis of the current state of software quality, so I just did a summary of the main points, as an opportunity to ask Capers some questions.
What lessons can we learn if we apply ITIL principles for Capacity Management to the field of application quality?
We have seen in the previous post that, in order to provide quality in accordance with Service Level Agreements (SLAs), schedules and budgets, we need to know what we have, the application portfolio, but also its quality.
This knowledge based on quantitative and qualitative metrics help us to better meet users needs, as we will see in this second and final article.
I presented last week the main axes of Capacity Management according to ITIL.
If we try to apply these best practices in the domain of Quality, what are the lessons that can be learned? What would be Quality management seen as an analogy of Capacity management? Is it possible to do « more with less » as do more and more Production teams?
The primary objective of Capacity Management is to deliver the capacity, that is to say, the resources you need: a development or a QA server, a little more disk space for a database, more CPU in a virtual machine, etc.
ITIL adds also that Capacity Management must be ensured in accordance with SLA in a timely and cost effective manner.
If we apply this approach to Quality, we could say that the “Quality management” is to deliver quality, in accordance with service level agreements and deadlines and budgets. How to get there? Continue reading
A question we see regularly: how to improve the productivity of IT departments? In this era of economic crisis, increased competition, globalization, how to further reduce costs, where to find new sources of optimization? In short, how to do « more with less »?
I’m sure many will think that I am talking about « how to improve the productivity of developers and projects »? But I think that, more and more, the Production departments are the ones doing better to answer this question, thanks to virtualization.
You know what is my favorite joke about consultants?
A man walks into a pet shop and sees a monkey in a cage with a label ‘C Monkey – $2,000’. The store owner comes and the customer tells him « This monkey is expensive. He must be very special ». And the owner explains « It’s a monkey that knows how to program in C. Very good programmer, fast, he produces good quality code and bug-free. At that price, it’s a good deal ».
The customer looks at another cage with a sign ‘C++ Monkey – $3,000’ and says « This one is even more expensive. What does he know? ». « Same as the first one, but with C++, an object oriented language, more complex. He too is a very good programmer. And he also knows a bit of Java. ».
The customer then sees a third cage with a panel ‘Monkey – $5,000’. « Oh, this one is as expensive as the other two combined. He must be really good. What he can do? ».
« Well, I don’t really know » replies the owner. « But he says he is a consultant ». (1)