Reaching the Purple Standard

A couple of weeks ago Jean Ann Harrison & Jay Philips presented the “Reaching the Purple Standard” at STPCon Fall 2014. Below is the info from the presentation and the corresponding slides:

Session Info:
Everyone is always talking about the gold standard or the best in class, but how about taking it even further? Let’s get to the Purple Standard where we try to prevent defects. Every application will have defects, but does your software project team plan, work towards or even put any focus on preventing defects to even occur? How could a project team even know what techniques to use to prevent something which has not occurred?

• Software Requirements Analysis – Organizations should have the test team involved to review the requirements as they are being written.
• Reviews – Implement code reviews, test reviews, log reviews. Review your own work, review other peoples work.
• Documentation – Don’t go overboard and document everything. Document what is needed for you and/or someone else to pick up what you’re doing at anytime.
• Defects – Verify the way people are logging defects so others can reproduce when needed. Make sure all defects go through a full root cause analysis. This will help resolve the current defect and prevent ones in the future.

Session Takeaways:

• Learn simple tools to evaluate requirements for testability
• Avoid ambiguity in requirements
• Methods in studying the architecture design prior to testing
• Techniques to incorporate code reviews and test reviews