Friday, October 1, 2004

Meeting Topic:

"Collaborate with Clients and Users for Software, Service and Support Quality ? Especially in Urgent Real-Time, Mission-Critical and Data-Rich Problems."

Presenter: Arnie Goodman
UCI

Abstract

Software is probably that product in our lives which yields the poorest quality experience and involves the highest frustration level. There is sufficient industry-wide evidence that the likelihood of enterprise system software, service and support being completely successful is much too low, apparently around 0.05 to 0.10.

Decades of pursuing methodologies-of-the-moment have produced not only adversarial relationships, but also a process focused upon development efficiency at the expense of performance effectiveness. What is most lacking is an implementation of the fundamental principles for quality through a genuine collaboration to incorporate the perspectives and desires of both clients and users. Current infatuation of some with agile and lean approaches to six sigma quality will probably not improve the situation substantially.

This should no longer be defensible by software engineers or acceptable for clients and users -- especially in urgent real-time, mission-critical and data-rich situations.

In areas that are yet not well understood, a prioritized checklist of critical success factors provides guidance on "what to do" and "why do it". If maximum scores that add to one are associated with those factors, a scorecard provides guidance on "how well it is done" and "how best to improve".

The paper describes a Software Quality Process to define, design and implement quality into software, service and support. Commit, communicate and evaluate are the key areas of critical success factors in collaboration. Scorecards for Collaboration throughout
the Process and Managing Software Quality are presented.

Your Presenter: Arnie Goodman is the Associate Director of the UCI Center for Statistical Consulting, at the University of California, Irvine. He co-founded the UCI Center for Statistical Consulting. He has over 40 years as a statistician in computing and over 20 years in Deming's quality movement in aerospace, petroleum, government and university environments. Dr. Goodman co-founded the Annual Symposia on the Interface of Computing and Statistics in 1967 and is planned out to 2008.

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