This Month’s Meeting: Program Manager: Dick Hedger / Patrick Wegerson
Topic: Process Strategy and Practices: Achieving Improved Quality and Costs of Quality in a High Maturity Software Organization
Speaker: Dr.Stephen H. Kan, Sr. Technical Staff Member (STSM) and technical manager in programming, IBM - Rochester
Abstract: This presentation describes the process and quality strategy, and specific practices in a high maturity (CMM Level 5) software organization that led to sustained quality improvement and reduced costs. Select practices with regard to the end to end process from requirements management to customer validation will be highlighted. The process strategy is also linked directly to a defect removal strategy by development phase which is linked to the quality of the deliverables.
Quality improvements overtime, as shown by field defect rates, system availability and other indicators will be shown. Comparison of relative cost of independent testing with industry data and with other less mature organizations within the same coporation will be attempted. Factors and practices that are deemed as contributing to the quality improvement and current pattern of cost distribution will be discussed.
A revised version of this presentation will be presented at the SEPG 2006 conference poster session.
Dr. Stephan Kan Bio:
Dr.Stephen H. Kan is a Senior Technical Staff Member (STSM) and a technical manager in programming at IBM in Rochester, Minnesota. He is responsible for the Quality Management Process in software development for IBM’s eServer iSeries covering all aspects of quality ranging from quality goal setting, supplier quality requirements, quality plans, in-process metrics and quality assessments, to reliability projections, field quality tracking, and customer satisfaction. He is the author of the book Metrics and Models in Software Quality Engineering, numerous technical reports, and articles and chapters in professional journals. He has participated in and led many software project and process assessments over the past fifteen years. He established the CMM strategy for the iSeries software organization and led the process improvement effort, together with a core team, in achieving CMM Level 5 assessment in 2004. Dr. Kan is also a faculty member of the University of Minnesota MSSE program (Master of Science in Software Engineering) since 1998.
