Use Case Documentation

Last month I attended a free breakfast seminar hosted by Borland. This seminar consisted of demos of their products focused around Requirements Based Testing. I liked DefineIT – a tool for documenting requirements. Nice thing about this tool is automatic generation of flow diagram based on steps defined in requirements.

This got me interested in similar tools and I have looked at 2 other tools so far: Visual Use Case, Use Case Studio

Irrespective of features available in these tools using any of the tools to document use cases is better than trying to do it through word document. I may do a more detailed evaluation of these tools in next few weeks.

Links to tools

• DefineIt from Borland
• Visual Use Case from Techno Solutions
• Use Case Studio from Rewritten Software

Blog: Joel on Software

I have not read this popular book “Joel on Software” yet, but I have been following the blog. I see Joel has very strong opinions and insight into issues business of Software Development.

I would strongly recommend visiting this blog and subscribe to posts.

I recommend reading these specific posts. Two of the posts on related to recruiting great developers. They are a little long articles but worth the time.

Field Guide to Developers
Sorting Resumes

The following article is Advice for Computer Science college students

I am sure you will find this blog useful addition to your watch list. You can join after you read the above articles.

Tip: Productivity through new browsers

You can definitely save time with some of the usability features that are coming up in internet browsers.

1. Firefox browser became very popular especially with multiple tabs in a single browser. If you are using Firefox you must have found his useful. This reduces clutter and you can quickly navigate between different sites. (http://www.firefox.com/)

2. Yahoo Toolbar: This Tab interface has become popular and you can introduce the same functionality in Internet explorer 6.0 if you install Yahoo Toolbar. (http://toolbar.yahoo.com/ )

3. Microsoft is coming up Internet Explorer 7. I have installed Beta and found the Tab interface quite useful. This is still in beta and available only one a specific operating system and service pack. http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/default.mspx . You can view new features available on Internet Explorer 7 on this site.

Key time management words in the above are: Reduced Clutter, All tasks in one Window.

If you already not using tab interface with browser, do it now.

Views on Conferences

Have you attended any technical conferences? Last month my company had its user conference Informatica World 2006 in San Francisco. It was a good opportunity to interact with customers.

I have not attended many conferences, but feel I should attend more conferences. Conferences are great opportunities to network with people in field. I attended and gave a presentation almost 7 years back. This was conference arranged by QAI India in Bangalore. My presentation on automated testing went on very well and had a chance to make friends. I am still in touch with a few people who liked my presentation.

When one attends a conference there is always a focus on getting best out of the conference.

• What’s New: What is coming up in the product or technology
• How can I Apply this: Next step will be how can I be more productive from the learning at the conference.
• What am I missing: Lot of times we don’t have opportunities to go beyond our current project and conferences give a chance to interact and learn from others. It can be either what succeeded as well as what failed.
• Best Practices: Are there best practices that others are able to implement that I can take away.

Most conferences also offer tutorial sessions that can be an added advantage.

Another thing is it also gives a chance to people to get away from crazy work schedules. Another conference I remember attending is Microsoft’s TechEd session. It was a one day conference but it was useful to understand new technology coming from Microsoft.

Informatica World 2006

My paper presented at conference held by QAI India

Knowledgebase: One hundred rules for NASA project managers

There are always things to learn about Project Management. I came across this link through another blog. This is certainly worth reading and implementing some of them. Go ahead and implement some of those ideas.

http://www.altisinc.com/resources/rules/100_rules.php

Sustainable Software Development

During my hunt for best practices in most of the things I do, I come across very good articles on various websites. Most of the time some newsletters are my sources. I had created a forum to share good articles. There are more than 150 articles posted on this forum over years and I still continue to use some ideas from the articles posted here

A recent article I found was very apt to my thinking. This was a book excerpt on Sustainable Software Development. Click here to read the article.

This article focused on continuous improvement in software development. I will try to find time to read the full book.

Quality is Free

This is the title of book by Philip Crosby that I read a long time back. My understanding of quality after reading this was: business success is mostly driven by quality. Quality of products, services determines success of any business. Paying attention to quality must be one of the primary task business should do to ensure continued success.

I have made quality as my career objective and do my best to take care of this critical aspect.
My articles on Quality at work and Quality is in details reflect my thoughts on quality.

Recently I gave a presentation on dimensions of quality in software. Following are the aspects that I think are important while evaluating software quality.

•Functionality
•Performance
•Supportability
•Maintainability
•Upgrade
•Integration
•Scalability
•Standards
•Customizability
•Security

Software testing should not just focus on functionality but take care of all the above dimensions also.

Once quality of products and services is handled well, business will take care of itself and there will not be a need to take corrective actions to keep business alive. In my opinion quality speaks for itself.

Related Links:
Take Ten Minutes newsletter . Archives of newsletter containing some insightful articles.
Articles : Articles posted on Philip Crosby Associates website.

Technical Tip: Read RSS Feeds in Outlook

I have used a free RSS feed reader and since I prefer to get all my content in outlook, I was on the look out for feed readers that work within Microsoft Outlook. Finally I found a free tool called IntraVnews which I have started using. It is quite useful. You can download and try it and have a free personal license to use it with outlook.

Now I don’t have to visit multiple sites to get content. It is all in once place, my Outlook.

Usability: Should I fix the usability bugs?

During my testing experience, lot of times I tend to report Usability bugs. Usability bugs are minor inconveniences to users and they don’t prevent users from using the system or they disrupt functionality. They are mostly a better way of doing a particular action within software.

I have been following trends in usability and there is no end to improvements one can make to software to make it better usable. And software developers and project managers are often inundated with requests to make usability improvements. They sometimes come under criticism for not addressing ‘critical’ usability issues. On the other hand developers fail to understand how ‘usability’ can be a critical issue. When they are struggling with more important ‘features’ needed in the system or working on making performance improvements, they find usability issues trivial.

So the question is why is Usability so important? On what basis they should prioritize usability requirements over other important features?

Example from practical life

On my way to office I used to notice a pot hole in the road. I always used to make sure that I don’t get into the pot hole and remember it. And everyday I used to wish the transport department will take care of it so that this ‘irritant’ will go away. This was a daily reminder to me and every day I pass the pot hole I used to wish it again. As a regular user of the road it was usability issue and I wanted it to be fixed.

One day I was going to office and suddenly noticed that pot hole has been fixed overnight. I was glad. It made me happy. I don’t have to remember every day to avoid the pot hole. It restored my confidence the transport department is ‘really working’ and taking care of minor issues also. Now I have become glad and will sure express my happiness if asked to.

Prioritizing Software Usability bugs

A software developer is not a user of system. So it is difficult for developer to appreciate usability issues. But a user of software will use the system on a daily basis. And over a period of time users become expert users. And expert users like their voice to be heard and their purpose of reporting usability issues is to be heard and enhance their experience. Sure they can work around the usability problem, but they are reminded on daily basis and think “why don’t they take care of this minor issue?”.

And also a usability issue generally becomes a productivity issue. Lot of times usability issues reported look silly but they make a big difference. An examples of usability issue is : giving a keyboard short cut to a frequently used command in system. Using CTRL + S short cut is a standard to use save option and I use it frequently. I do save every one minute to avoid loss of work. Imagine a new software which does not use this short cut but forces me to use mouse (involving three clicks) OR uses another short cut is a usability issue for me.

Fixing a usability issue makes a ’satisfied user’ a ‘raving fan’.   As you start taking care of usability issues, you will start gaining more trust from users that we are thoughtful of taking their minor issues. Fixing usability issues makes learning process for users short and makes them glad.

It is also possible that so many others are facing similar usability issues but don’t bother to report.

I would not really recommend  any set of steps to prioritize usability bugs. Make it a practice to take care of all usability bugs. Set up a process in which you can make it a habit to fix usability bugs.

Fix one usability bug for every 5 other bugs you fix. Or fix 25% of open usability issues for every release.

Some of the usability issues might be very easy to fix. In such cases fix them at the earliest opportunity.

Some of the usability issues might need design changes. In such cases add this as a requirement in your next version.

Summary

If you ask a software sales team or marketing team you will understand that convincing users from a vendor perspective is very difficult. But if the ‘appreciation’ comes from a user it makes a different impact. As I stated in my article Power of personal recommendation [1], fixing usability issues and getting more raving fans is one sure way to improve a software and works better than many promotional methods.

Useful Macro for Microsoft Project

During my project management experience I have learned to use Microsoft Project Tool. I had learned how to effectively use this tool and make best out of it. During its usage I found MS Project’s feature of saving the project as HTML file not quite usable. I have developed a macro which has some simple advantages compared to the default option provided by the tool.

Old Format:

This is a sample HTML file saved by using default option of Microsoft Project.

• This HTML page does not indent the tasks as per hierarchy defined in the project

• Default font and colors are not pleasing

• It is not possible to save Notes along with task

• Task Assignments are always exported in this sample.

New Format:

To overcome the above problems, I developed this simple Macro in MS Project which generates HTML page report that can be published on intranet.

This is sample HTML file created using the tool:

• Tasks are indented based on the hierarchy of tasks

• Font and colors used are different and can be changed.

• Notes is also displayed for each task when applicable. It is available as tool tip and also at end of the page (useful when printed)

• Only required information is exported compared to default format.

Click here to view and copy the Macro code. You can use this if you find it useful.

If you found any bugs or would like an enhancement do let me know.