Case Analysis for Quiz 5
The Manchester United Soccer Tournament project team
has identified the following potential risks to their
project:
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Referees failing to show up at designated games.
Fighting between teams.
Pivotal error committed by a referee that determines the
outcome of a game.
Abusive behavior along the sidelines by parents.
Inadequate parking.
Not enough teams sign up for different age brackets.
Serious injury.
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Event
Response
Contingency
Referees fail to
show up
Mitigate---contact referees night before games
Referee (s) on call who can
fill in
Fighting
Mitigate---train referees on how to diffuse
potentially violent situations/publicize stiff
penalties for fighting
Referees, game officials, and
coaches intervene
Error
Mitigate---recruit seasoned referees and assign
best referees to most important games
Have a tournament czar who
adjudicates appeals
Abusive
parents
Transfer---assign responsibility to coaches to
manage
Referees empowered to
penalize team and
dismiss parents
Inadequate
parking
Mitigate: level game schedule
Shuttle service
Not enough
teams
Mitigate: PR campaign
Collapse age groups
Injury
Accept
Contact ER in advance, setup
field communication
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system
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10. Managing quality
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Many people joke about the poor quality of
IT products (cars and computers joke)
People seem to accept systems being down
occasionally or needing to reboot their PCs
There are many examples in the news
about quality-related problems
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10. Managing quality
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In one of the biggest software errors in banking history,
Chemical Bank mistakenly deducted about $15 million from
more than 100,000 customer accounts one evening. The
problem resulted from a single line of code in an updated
computer program that caused the bank to process every
withdrawal and transfer at its automated teller machines
(ATMs) twice. For example, a person who withdrew $100
from an ATM had $200 deducted from his or her account,
though the receipt only indicated a withdrawal of $100. The
mistake affected 150,000 transactions from Tuesday night
through Wednesday afternoon.
In 1996 Apple Computer's PowerBook 5300 model had
problems with lithium-ion battery packs catching fire, causing
Apple to halt shipments and replace all the packs with nickelmetal-hydride batteries. Other quality problems also
surfaced, such as cracks in the PowerBook's plastic casing
and a faulty electric power adapter.
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10. Software quality – Gates & GM
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At a COMDEX exposition, Bill Gates stated,
“If General Motors had kept up with
technology like the computer industry has,
we would all be driving twenty-five dollar
cars that got 1000 miles to the gallon.”
In response to Gates’ comments, General
Motors issued a press release stating, “If
GM had developed technology like
Microsoft, we would all be driving cars with
the following characteristics:
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10. Software quality – Gates & GM
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For no reason whatsoever your car would crash twice a
day.
Every time they repainted the lines on the road you
would have to buy a new car.
Occasionally your car would die on the freeway for no
reason, and you would just accept this, restart, and
drive on.
Occasionally, executing a maneuver such as a left turn,
would cause your car to shut down and refuse to
restart, in which case you would have to reinstall the
engine.
The airbag system would say ‘Are you sure?’ before
going off.
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10. Software quality – Gates & GM
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Occasionally, for no reason whatsoever, your
car would lock you out and refuse to let you in
until you simultaneously lifted the door handle,
turned the key, and grabbed hold of the radio
antenna.
Every time GM introduced a new model car,
buyers would have to learn how to drive all
over again because none of the controls would
operate in the same manner as the old car.
You would press the Start button to shut off the
engine.
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10. Quality matters
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Software quality is a critical success factor.
Software quality must:
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Have the support of the management
Be planned early in the design phase
Be understood and followed by everyone on the
team
Be monitored continuously
Be documented for accountability and reference
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10. Quality matters
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Several factors influenced system developers
to consider system quality:
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End user computing environment
User friendly tools
User satisfaction as surrogate for system
success
Fourth generation languages/products
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10. Quality advantage
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Emphasis on quality has several advantages:
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Financial – maintenance, time
Operational – rework, bugs
Legal – privacy, security
Contractual – compliance
Customer relation – CRM
Reputation – image
Moral – being part of a winning team
Appraisal – performance evaluation
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10. What is quality?
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The International Organization for
Standardization (ISO) defines quality as the
totality of characteristics of an entity that bear
on its ability to satisfy stated or implied needs
Other experts define quality based on
 conformance
to requirements: meeting written
specifications
 fitness for use: ensuring a product can be used
as it was intended
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10. Quality management
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Modern quality management
 requires
customer satisfaction
 prefers prevention to inspection
 recognizes management responsibility for
quality
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Noteworthy quality experts include Deming,
Juran, Crosby, Ishikawa, Taguchi, and
Feigenbaum
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10. Quality pioneers
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Deming was famous for his work in rebuilding
Japan and his 14 points
Juran wrote the Quality Control Handbook and 10
steps to quality improvement
Crosby wrote Quality is Free and suggested that
organizations strive for zero defects
Ishikawa developed the concept of quality circles
and using fishbone diagrams
Taguchi developed methods for optimizing the
process of engineering experimentation
Feigenbaum developed the concept of total quality
control
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10. Quality awards
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The Malcolm Baldrige Quality Award was
started in 1987 to recognize companies with
world-class quality
ISO 9000 provides minimum requirements
for an organization to meet their quality
certification standards
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10. Quality management
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Plan it: identifying which quality standards
are relevant to the project and how to satisfy
them
Implement it: evaluating overall project
performance to ensure the project will
satisfy the relevant quality standards
Monitor it: monitoring specific project results
to ensure that they comply with the relevant
quality standards while identifying ways to
improve overall quality
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10. Quality planning
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It is important to design for quality and
communicate important factors that directly
contribute to meeting the customer’s
requirements
Design of experiments helps identify which
variables have the most influence on the overall
outcome of a process
Many scope aspects of IT projects affect quality
like functionality, features, system outputs,
performance, reliability, and maintainability
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10. Quality implementation
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Quality assurance includes all the activities
related to satisfying the relevant quality
standards for a project
Another goal of quality assurance is
continuous quality improvement
Benchmarking can be used to generate
ideas for quality improvements
Quality audits help identify lessons learned
that can improve performance on current or
future projects
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10. Quality control
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The main outputs of quality control are:
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Acceptance decisions
Rework
Process adjustments
Some tools and techniques include:
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Pareto analysis
Statistical sampling
Quality control charts
Testing
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10. Quality pioneers suggest
Top management involvement
 Start early at the design phase
 Make it part of the process
 Keep it continuous
 Empower team members to manage quality
 Train team members for quality control and
assessment
 Reward teams for quality performance
 eliminate fear and promote free and open
communication
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10. Pareto analysis
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Pareto analysis involves identifying the vital
few contributors that account for the most
quality problems in a system
Also called the 80-20 rule, meaning that
80% of problems are often due to 20% of
the causes
Pareto diagrams are histograms that help
identify and prioritize problem areas
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10. Sample Pareto diagram
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10. Statistical sampling and standard
deviation
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Statistical sampling involves choosing part
of a population of interest for inspection
The size of a sample depends on how
representative you want the sample to be
Sample size formula:
Sample size =
.25 X (certainty factor/acceptable error)
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10. Commonly used certainty factors
Desired Certainty
Certainty Factor
95%
1.960
90%
1.645
80%
1.281
95% certainty: Sample size = 0.25 X (1.960/.05) = 384
90% certainty: Sample size = 0.25 X (1.645/.10) = 68
80% certainty: Sample size = 0.25 X (1.281/.20) = 10
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10. Standard deviation
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Standard deviation measures how much
variation exists in a distribution of data
A small standard deviation means that data
cluster closely around the middle of a
distribution and there is little variability
among the data
A normal distribution is a bell-shaped curve
that is symmetrical about the mean or
average value of a population
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10. Normal distribution and S. D.
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10. Sigma and defective units
Specification Range Percent of
Population
(in +/- Sigmas)
Defective Units
Per Billion
Within Range
1
68.27
317,300,000
2
95.45
45,400,000
3
99.73
2,700,000
4
99.9937
63,000
5
99.999943
57
6
99.9999998
2
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10. Six sigma and seven run rule
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Operating at a higher sigma value, like 6
sigma, means the product tolerance or
control limits have less variability
The seven run rule states that if seven data
points in a row are all below the mean,
above the mean, or increasing or
decreasing, then the process needs to be
examined for non-random problems
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10.Sample Quality Control Chart
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10. Fishbone diagram
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10. Testing
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Many IT professionals think of testing as a
stage that comes near the end of IT product
development
Testing should be done during almost every
phase of the IT product development life
cycle
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10. Types of tests
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A unit test is done to test each individual
component (often a program) to ensure it is as
defect free as possible
Integration testing occurs between unit and system
testing to test functionally grouped components
System testing tests the entire system as one entity
User acceptance testing is an independent test
performed by the end user prior to accepting the
delivered system
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10. Gantt Chart for building testing into a
systems development project plan
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10. Improving IT project quality
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Several suggestions for improving quality for
IT projects include
 Leadership
that promotes quality
 Understanding the cost of quality
 Focusing on organizational influences and
workplace factors that affect quality
 Following maturity models to improve quality
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10. Leadership
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“It is most important that top management
be quality-minded. In the absence of sincere
manifestation of interest at the top, little will
happen below.” (Juran, 1945)
A large percentage of quality problems are
associated with management, not technical
issues
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10. The cost of quality
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The cost of quality is
 the
cost of conformance or delivering
products that meet requirements and fitness
for use
 the cost of nonconformance or taking
responsibility for failures or not meeting
quality expectations
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10. Cost categories related to quality
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Prevention cost: the cost of planning and executing a
project so it is error-free or within an acceptable error
range
Appraisal cost: the cost of evaluating processes and
their outputs to ensure quality
Internal failure cost: cost incurred to correct an
identified defect before the customer receives the
product
External failure cost: cost that relates to all errors not
detected and corrected before delivery to the customer
Measurement and test equipment costs: capital cost
of equipment used to perform prevention and appraisal
activities
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10. Organizational influences,
workplace factors, and quality
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A study by DeMarco and Lister showed that
organizational issues had a much greater influence on
programmer productivity than the technical environment
or programming languages
Programmer productivity varied by a factor of one to ten
across organizations, but only by 21% within the same
organization
The study found no correlation between productivity and
programming language, years of experience, or salary
A dedicated workspace and a quiet work environment
were key factors to improving programmer productivity
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9. Discussion questions
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Describe three factors that influence quality.
How would you plan for quality control?
Does statistical quality control make sense
in all situations?
Do you find quality charts useful to your
monitoring of quality.
Does seven run rule make sense to you?
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9. Discussion questions
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The study by DeMarco and Lister showed that
organizational issues had a much greater
influence on programmer productivity than the
technical environment or programming
languages
Programmer productivity varied by a factor of
one to ten across organizations, but only by
21% within the same organization.
Does this make sense?
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9. Discussion questions
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The study found no correlation between
productivity and programming language,
years of experience, or salary
A dedicated workspace and a quiet work
environment were key factors to improving
programmer productivity
Does this make sense to you?
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