Sudeep D'Souza

There is always a lot of confusion over these two terms and in this article I will try to simplify what they are. What is Quality Assurance (QA) ? Quality Assurance are all the activities that go in to defining and managing a process that will assure a certain degree of quality based on the maturity of the process and the applicability of the process. There are two terms here that are important here - one is 'maturity' and the other is 'applicability' and it is important to understand both of them in terms of QA. Maturity of the process is the degree to which the process is defined. Processes can be vague - eg. Do XYZ activity. Or processes can be well defined - eg. Do XYZ activity using procedure P1 and fill up template T1 and verify it with a checklist C1 by an independent person. Maturity is also dependent on how much the process has been used and fine tuned based on the feedback from using the process. The more it is used and the more feedback incorporated into i

100 Rupees 10 Rupees 1 Rupee

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Today I received my copy of the proof coin set consisting of a 100 rupees and a two rupees coins. This is a scanned copy of the documentation and the coins. Click on the coins to see a bigger picture of the documentation and the coin.

Nagarjunasagar is about 150 kms from Hyderabad and is the site of the largest earth fill dam in the world. It is a truly spectacular sight and when the gates of the dam are opening on a flooded Krishna river it is a sight that is not to be missed. More information about the dam and how to get there can be got from the AP Tourism site. 8 kms from Nagarjunasagar is Ethipothala Falls which is also quite lovely. On a recent trip to Nagarjunasagar by some of the associates from work they took the pictures attached below. The credit for these lovely pictures goes to Ravi Varma and Jitendra.

This excel sheet will help anyone taking a loan on the monthly rests basis to keep track of the amount of interest and principal being paid out and to do calculations on how the loan will change on change of interest rate and doing pre payments. This sheet has the ability to calculate the EMI based on the interest rate and the tenure of the loan. It will also dynamically calculate the affect on the loan on changes of interest rate and part payments that are done. To use this sheet effectively it is important to keep it updated with the interest rate changes and part payments that have been made. It can also be used to calculate what the effects are on any one of these values changing. This excel sheets assumes there is no change in EMI. In case there is a change in EMI it is advised to start a new sheet with the new EMI and the new terms and conditions. Read this document carefully before using the sheet.

In this three part series I captured the Musical fountain and laser show in the amphitheater at the Lumbini Gardens in Hyderabad, India. This is Part 3.

In this three part series I captured the Musical fountain and laser show in the amphitheater at the Lumbini Gardens in Hyderabad, India. This is part 2.

In this three part series I captured the Musical fountain and laser show in the amphitheater at the Lumbini Gardens in Hyderabad, India. Take a look at Part 1.

Setting up a off-shore development center seems to be the latest buzz word for a lot of companies around the world. The reasons they do it for is varied and many. The cost factor is not the only reason. Some reasons why one might choose to set up an off-shore development center are To tap into the local talent pool that may not be present in the on-site location. To make use of the time difference between the time of the on-site and the off-site locations. To spread the risk of having a single development center. To be able to scale with quality man power. What ever the reasons might be the most important thing to do once the decision is made to start a off-shore development center is to identify the person that would be able to run operations. This person should ideally be from the location where the center is being set up. Why do I think it should be this way? Well, I hope to illustrate in the rest of this article as to why I think it should be this way. A person who is local would

The Quality Management System consists of the following types of artifacts Process Document Forms and Templates Guidelines Databases Checklists In a sentence the interaction between the documents is as follows "The affected individuals implement the Process Document , refer to the Guidelines and Databases , complete the forms and templates and verify the process compliance with the checklists to accomplish the process." Process Document The process document is the main overriding document that contains the roles and responsibilities of the affected parties, the tools needed to inplement the process, the procedure in which the process has to be performed the inputs and outputs. This document is the driving document that details the interaction between the various stake holders to convert the inputs into the outputs in an optimal maner. The process document should be in the form of a set of steps which when followed will accomplish the goals of the process. Forms and Tem

According to the CMMI Key Practice "Process and Product Quality Assurance" the SQA Representative is a "objective" and "is the eyes and ears of senior management". This document tries to explain how these two goals of being an SQA Representative can be achieved Get the buy-in of the team The first thing that the SQA Rep needs to do is to get the buy-in of the team that he is not there to create trouble. This is a total people management problem and I know this is easier said than done. A few things that have helped me are Don't go in acting like the teacher who has come to punish the misbehaving pupils. Try and act like the understanding father who is there to solve his child's problems.. Take time to understand the teams process - read their process documents, encourage them to talk about their process If they are non compliant try and understand why they are non compliant - talk to them about the issues they face and get into a discussion as t

Introduction A quality improvement program is a program that causes a change in the mindset. This is not an easy process and there are four clear phases in the implementation of any quality improvement program and these phases are Formulation Awareness Implementation Institutionalization Formulation The formulation phase is the phase where the goals for the quality improvement program are identified and the consists of the following activities Formation of the Quality Improvement Team It is very important to form a team that would be responsible for carrying forward the quality improvement program. It is not necessary that the team be a dedicated team. It can consist of members that are dedicated and members that are only part time and are used to carry out various activities of the quality improvement program. This team should have a clear charter and should have experience in the practices of the organization and also knowledge in the various quality models. It is important for this

Introduction A part of the Quality Management System is the definition of the quality process. The quality process is a set of process put together according to which software is developed and managed. It is very important to understand what is a process and how does one go about defining a process. In the first part of this document define s what a process is and goes into detail what the various constituents of a process are and subsequently a template for a process definition is given. Definition A process defines how trained resources using a set of tools and procedures convert one or more inputs into one or more outputs. The following diagram shows the interaction of the various elements of the process. It is important that all the constituents of the processes be looked into and defined very clearly. What would happen if we did not pay attention to any one component ? Let us say that in an organization there are very talented well trained people using the best tools the indus

I was reading an interesting set of articles posted by Joel on management methods in which he talks about three different management methods namely The Command and Control Method , The Econ 101 Method and The Identity Method . He then goes on to advocate that the Identity Method is the most suited method for the software industry. I totally agree with him now having had the experience of running a software development firm for the last year and a half. I would like to add some of my thoughts as to why I think this is the best approach in this blog article. If you apply Maslov's Hierarchy of Needs to the professionals working in the software industry they have all their basic needs met with the comforts and the security that a software job provides. What they look for are needs of Status and Self-actualization which basically translates into being recognized, appreciated and feel like they are learning each day and becoming better. This is what identity management method is as pe

Due to the blocking of the website http://sudeepivan.blogspot.com I have been forced to move to a new location http://www.ourspace.in/sudeepblog . Moving there was pretty straight forward - I already had the website http://www.ourspace.in which is a baby clothes shopping site being developed by my wife hosted at http://www.domaing8.com . All I had to do is create a subdomain there for sudeepblog and then come to http://www.blogger.com and change the publishing information to publish into the subdomain. The only part where some thought had to be put into was that once you create the subdomain - domaing8 does not create the subfolder automatically you have to do it yourself. One issue that I am facing is that I am not able to view some of the images from my new website. I am not sure what the problem is - so if anyone out there reads this post and knows why I can't see some of my messages do let me know.

I have been able to post articles in Blogspot by going to http://www.blogger.com but then I can't view any of my articles at http://sudeepivan.blogspot.com . I have tried this on two service providers Tata Indicom and Airtel and both give me absolutely the same behaviour. The ISPs have blocked access to blogspot (all the blogs on it) where users cannot view any blogs due to anti national elements posting articles as blogs (just a few blogs - 13 of them is what i understand) but then it has not stopped them from posting on the blogs by allowing access to http://www.blogger.com so that the rest of the world can read the articles. All I think this is doing is showing how technically inefficient we are when we are trying to show the world that we can develop and manage their software systems however complex they are. Its time we pull up those responsible for this chirade and sort out all of this before we become the laughing stock of the world.