alan@tivoli.UUCP (Alan R. Weiss) (02/16/91)
In article <3212.27b7a47f@iccgcc.decnet.ab.com> sturdevant@iccgcc.decnet.ab.com (Mike S.) writes: >In article <1991Feb11.203811.21352@cbnewsl.att.com>, arrizzo@cbnewsl.att.com (anthony.r.rizzo) writes: >> There's another buz-term floating around the industry: quality metrics. >> It seems that engineering managers now want to measure one or >> several quality indicators. The dilemma that I see is that there >> is disagreement as to what indicators to measure, particularly >> when the measurements involve engineering > > We want to but are having trouble deciding what to measure. > >> So I ask this of the networld: Are you involved in measuring >> the quality of your engineering? What are you measuring? >> What do you plan to do with the data? > > We've looked at measuring field returns (our QA department >already does this), percent of reworks on the shop floor, failures in >system test. If anybody has figured this issue out, I'd sure like to >know. >-- > >Those preservatives might be preserving you. >I think that's something you missed. > ---------G. Slick > >Go fast. Take chances. >Mike S. You need to go subscribe to comp.software-eng. I have posted a number of articles on this, my chosen profession of Quality Assurance :-) Quality Metrics is not a buzz-term, but rather simply the measurement of your business. You do it every day: that's what accounting is. Production people apply statistical quality control every day. Now software is coming under the same sort of control. The result will be better quality software (please, if you are not persuaded by this by now then lets talk off line and I'll send you my prior ten bazillion postings on why this is so, OK?). We measure doctors all the time: did you get well, or sicker? Lawyers: did you win or lose the case, and how much did you suck out of the other guy? Teachers: SAT and test scores of their students (much more needs to be done here). Are we professionals, or are we going to be artists? Do we consider` our engineers, or movie producers (actually a good process model question ... don't steal the concept, I'm writing an article on this subject for the ACM :-) Regards and crosspostings, _______________________________________________________________________ Alan R. Weiss TIVOLI Systems, Inc. E-mail: alan@tivoli.com 6034 West Courtyard Drive, E-mail: alan@whitney.tivoli.com Suite 210 Voice : (512) 794-9070 Austin, Texas USA 78730 Fax : (512) 794-0623 _______________________________________________________________________