ISSRE 2006 - Case Study – Improved quality and reduced product cycle time through defect prevention activity and analysis

Case Study – Improved quality and reduced product cycle time through defect prevention activity and analysis

Eileen Francis and Cormac Cummins

The 17th IEEE International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering (ISSRE 2006) -- Industry Practices (ISSRE 2006)
Raleigh, North Carolina, USA, 6-10 November 2006

Abstract

Defect prevention is one of the key process areas within the CMM level 5 model. It can be very effective at reducing cost and improving quality. It can also greatly improve the yield of the appraisal processes. When an organization institutes a defect prevention process, it puts the responsibility of analyzing and acting on defect data squarely in the lap of its development teams. This promotes an understanding the costs of the team’s defects and challenges the team to prevent the defects in the first place, by taking ownership of product quality.

A case study is presented to showcase the defects found in a release and the significant reduction of defects in the next release deployed to customers. Orthogonal Defect Classification (ODC) technique is used in our case study to understand the escaped defects mathematically in order to gain insight into the defects. Through analysis and metrics, this paper provides the readers understanding on how key metrics plays a role in defect prevention activity. The objective of this section is to derive defect prevention activity based on the analysis carried out through ODC signature. The case study will highlight that improved Cost of Quality (CoQ) and Engineering Success Ratio (ESR) will result amongst rest reduced customer reported defects and improved phase containment/screening

Other than displaying the success of reducing defects in the current release, this case study has also covered the process improvement in placed for the future release as well. In any process improvement, continuity is vital to ensure customers continue to enjoy the promised quality from release to release. In conclusion, this paper draws the attention of the reader to the benefits of having defect prevention activity in place amongst rest would be fewer defects, improved quality and reliability.

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