Measurement as a Powerful Management Tool
by Nicholas Ashley
Publisher: McGraw Hill Book Co Ltd, 1995
ISBN: 0077079027, 318 Pages
"A science is as
mature as its measurement tools"
- Louis Pasteur
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Software testing is a developing science. Nicholas Ashley's book has useful information on implementing a measurement program for software quality. The book is divided into six sections and in addition, contains useful appendices to support its detailed content.
Section 1 offers a blueprint for establishing a measurement program. The eight phases in this section take one through:
- Appointing an executive sponsor
- Establishing scope and goals
- Defining Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
- Setting up a data collection infrastructure
- Explaining the program
- Devising success criteria
- Setting baselines and targets for KPIs, and
- Developing a feedback mechanism
Section 2 explains statistical process control and the use of control charts for software improvement.
Section 3 is somewhat more academic and is a discourse on specifying and measuring software quality.
Section 4 discusses useful metrics concerning defect data.
Section 5 presents project effort estimation techniques
Section 6 adds a conclusion to the material presented in the book.
I found sections 1, 2 and 4 particularly useful and also benefited from the overview of analysis techniques and function point analysis found as two of the six appendices.
At times I felt that the book was strongly directed and it held my attention. Whilst other times I could not understand why the material I was reading was there, the flow was not clear to me. Apart from this apparent lack of cohesion or ebb-and-flow of the book's power, in my opinion, on balance I found it a worthwhile read.
The book is edited by Professor David Ince and is one of a series of titles from the McGraw-Hill International Software Quality Assurance Series.
Although the book may be a little dated by now, it presents useful quality measures and the processes behind their construction. An alert reader will be able to apply the principles in this book to extend and/or adapt the given measures to meet any new testing measurement challenges.
If you are not currently measuring your testing processes, then you have not matured the science of testing in your career or organisation. This book will help you to manage your software testing processes better.
Wayne Mallinson