Project Mastery

Business team looking at computer

Shasta QA uses a success formula that includes risk reduction methodologies, process adoption and bug modeling to improve and master overall project processes to strengthen your bottom line. Software quality assurance is about reducing risk. The risks associated with product development cannot be entirely eliminated, but they can be reduced. Consider these questions that are inevitable in project lifecycles:

  • Will the product ship on time?

  • Is the effort facing possible cost overruns?

  • How likely are unacceptable defects to appear in released software?

  • Will final product features meet expectations and needs of end users?

RISK REDUCTION

Mastering QA is not just about improving QA processes; it’s about removing risk from the entire development process, which strengthens your bottom line. Shasta QA helps organizations establish a strong return on investment strategies for improved methodologies in areas such as automation, leveraged test efforts and API testing. We strive to help you develop clear process adoption paths by using risk reduction tables, considering cost/time expenditures and evaluating potential ROI for each category.

An important part of risk reduction is doing the right thing at the right time. Choosing the appropriate mix of Shasta QA Methodologies will:

  • Improve product quality related to software defects, usability, feature sets and user needs

  • Improve software development processes, direction, and predictability for schedules and deliverables

  • Reduce software development life cycle time and costs

Risk management is a success formula that factors process, time and investment into its equation. Organizations that have an appropriate balance of these areas have reduced risk levels.

PROCESS ADOPTION PATH

You may choose to only implement some risk reduction processes as they may be too costly or time-consuming, or they could simply be overkill for the current needs of your project. Shasta QA works with you to evaluate where you are in your processes in order to come to a mutual agreement to move forward with process improvement.

Completed, customized maturity tables serve as a basis for planning and scheduling QA processes. With schedule milestones linked to maturity growth, progress occurs along a defined path with measurable adoption of new processes according to a schedule linked to releases or fixed dates. Understanding how to improve QA processes is a critical step forward, but effective process adoption is unlikely without follow-up and scheduled process maturity milestones.

BUG MODELING

As part of improving and mastering overall project processes, we work with you to establish project bug models for tracking and reporting project status. Our bug modeling approach is simple: We aim to ensure new issues can be addressed in a timely fashion by development staff.

Shasta QA’s model is a useful tool for “gut checks” regarding accuracy of schedules and development of staff expectations. Bug modeling elements include:

  • Estimating incoming incidents

  • Bug fix rates

  • Available resources

  • Real-time adjustment

Estimating and tracking these details (with periodic revisions) to reflect actual activity makes bug modeling a powerful tool for actively managing projects, as opposed to retroactively tracking statistics.

REVIEW EARLY ASSUMPTIONS

Scheduled milestones should not just track accomplishment of specific tasks, but should also provide opportunities to review and evaluate overall plans, which ensures appropriate test coverage moving forward. Project knowledge increases with a project’s longevity, and we use that knowledge to verify your project’s direction as well as the validity of initial assumptions.

Bottom Line...we work hard to get out in front of your project needs, not just report their history.

See how Shasta QA can help your business excel above the competition, contact us for a free consultation today.