Pass the Software Certifications Software Certification CSQA Questions and answers with ExamsMirror

Answer is below in explanation.

Explanation

Exhibit:

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Plan (P): Devise a plan - Define the objective, expressing it numerically, if possible. Clearly describe the goals and policies needed to attain the objective at this stage. Determine the procedures and conditions for the means and methods that will be used to achieve the objective.

Do (D): Execute the plan - Create the conditions and perform the necessary teaching and training to ensure everyone understands the objectives and the plan. Teach workers the procedures and skills they need to fulfill the plan and thoroughly understand the job. Then perform the work according to these procedures.

Check (C): Check the results – As often as possible, check to determine whether work is progressing according to the plan and whether the expected results are obtained. Check for performance of the procedures, changes in conditions, or abnormalities that may appear.

Act (A): Take the necessary action - If the check reveals that the work is not being performed according to plan, or if results are not what were anticipated, devise measuresfor appropriate action. Look for the cause of the abnormality to prevent its recurrence. Sometimes workers may need to be retrained and procedures revised. The next plan should reflect these changes and define them in more detail.

Preventive controls are located throughout the entire IT system. Many of these controls are executed prior to the data entering the computer programs. Following are three of the 8 preventive controls:

Source-data authorization- Once data has been recorded properly, there should be control techniques to ensure that the source data has been authorized. Typically, authorization should be given for source data such as credit terms, prices, discounts, commission rates, overtime hours, and so forth.

Data input -Data input is the process of converting data in non-machine-readable form (such as hard-copy source documents) into a machine-readable form so that the computer can update files with the transactions. Since the data input process is typically a manual operation, control is needed to ensure that the data input has been performed accurately.

Source-data preparation -In many automated systems, conventional source documents are still used and, therefore, no new control problems are presented prior to the conversion of source documents into machine-readable form. Specially designed forms promote the accuracy of the initial recording of the data. A pre-audit of the source documents by knowledgeable personnel to detect misspellings, invalid codes, unreasonable amounts, and other improper data helps to promote the accuracy of input preparation.

The Test Manager ensures that testing is performed, that it is documented, and that testing techniques are established and developed. The manager is also responsible for:

Planning and estimating tests

Designing the test strategy

Ensuring tests are created and executed in a timely and productive manner

Measurement Dashboards

Measurement dashboards (also called key indicators) are used to monitor progress and initiate change. A measurement dashboard is analogous to the dashboard on a car. Various key indicators are presented in comparison to their own desired target value (i.e., speed, oil temperature). Arrayed together, they provide an overall snapshot of the car's performance, health, and operating quality. Measurement dashboards help ensure that all critical performance areas are analyzed in relation to other areas. Indicators evaluated alone can lead to faulty conclusions and decision-making.

Key Indicators

Key indicators are the metrics used by management to help them fulfill their management responsibilities. Managers decide what key metrics they need. A dashboard is comprised of the total number of key indicators used by a single manager. The concept of “key” means the metric is considered important by the user in managing job responsibilities. Normally the key indicator is created from many different measures. For example, the Dow Jones Average is created from the combining of stock prices from approximately 40 different stocks.

Select Process and Team

The process to be improved may be selected by the improvement team or assigned by management. Leaders of improvement teams are usually process owners, and members are process users and may be cross-functional. Organizational improvement team members are usually volunteers; however, if subject experts are required and none volunteer, management will assign them. After the process has been selected and the improvement team formed, customers of, and suppliers to, the process are determined. If not already on the team, customer and supplier representatives should be added when practical.

Describe the Process

Two simultaneous actions are initiated in this step: defining customer-supplier relationships and determining actual process flow. The customer's requirements are defined using operational definitions to assure complete understanding between those providing the product or service and the customer. The customer's quality characteristics are defined and the current state of satisfying these, determined. In most instances, the customer referred to is the internal customer. This same idea is applied to the suppliers in the process. The process owner's expectations are defined for suppliers of inputs to the process. The customer and supplier must then agree on the specifications to be met and how quality will be measured.

Assess the Process

To assure that decisions are being made using precise and accurate data, the measurement system used to assess the process must be evaluated. If the measurement is counting, care should be taken to assure that everyone is counting the same things in the same manner. Once it has been determined that the measurement system accurately describes the data of interest, the input and output should be measured and baselines established.

Brainstorm for Improvement

The team should review all relevant information, such as the process flowchart, cause-and-effect diagrams, and control charts. A brainstorming session may be held to generate ideas for reducing input variation. It may help to visualize the ideal process. Improvement ideas must be prioritized and a theory for improvement developed. The what, how, and why of the improvement should be documented so everyone agrees to the plan. All statistical tools should be used in this step, although brainstorming is used the most.

Plan How to Test Proposed Improvement(s)

In this step a plan for testing the proposed improvement developed in the preceding step is created. This process improvement plan specifies what data is to be collected, how the data is to be collected, who will collect the data, and how the data will be analyzed after collection. The specific statistical tools to be used for analysis are defined. Attention is given to designing data collection forms that are simple, concise, and easy to understand. The forms should be tested before being put into use. The process improvement plan is a formal document that is approved by the improvement team.

Analyze Results

The plan developed in the prior step is implemented. The required data is collected using the previously tested forms, and then analyzed using the statistical tools noted in the process improvement plan. The plan is reviewed at improvement team meetings to track progress on process improvement. The tools usually used in this step are data collection methods, flowcharts, run charts, scatter diagrams, histograms, measurement capability, control charts, process capability, and advanced statistical techniques.

Compare Results

This step uses the same statistical tools as in Step 3 to compare the test results with that predicted in Step 4. Has the process been improved? Do the test results agree with scientific or engineering theory? If the results are not as expected, can they be explained? When results are not as expected, it is not a failure - something is still learned about the process and its variation. The new information will be used to develop a new theory. Care is taken to document lessons learned and accomplishments. A set of before and after Pareto charts, histograms, run charts, or control charts are generally used in this step.

Change Process or Redo Steps 4-8

If the results are not as expected, then based on what was learned, a new method for improvement must be developed by reverting back to Step 4. If the results are as expected, and are practical and cost effective, the change recommended in the process improvement plan is implemented. The implementation should be monitored to assure that the gains made in reducing variation are maintained. The team then returns to Step 2 to update the process documentation.

Develop a matrix of process results and contributors to show which contributors drive which results. The results should come from the process policy. The contributors can be positive or negative, and involve process, product, or resource attributes. Process attributes includecharacteristics such as time, schedule, and completion. Product attributes include characteristics such as size, correctness, reliability, usability, and maintainability. Resource attributes include characteristics such as amount, skill, and attitude. A cause-and-effect diagram is often used to graphically illustrate the relationship between results and contributors.

Assure process results are aligned to business results. Processes should help people accomplish their organization’s mission. Alignment is subjective in many organizations, but the more objective it is, the greater the chance that processes will drive the mission.

Rank the process results and the contributors from a management perspective. This will help workers make tradeoffs and identify where to focus management attention.

Select metrics for both the process results and contributors, and create two tactical process dashboards: one for process results and one for contributors. These dashboards are used to manage the projects and to control and report project status. Normally results are measured subjectively and contributors are measured objectively. For example, for a result of customer satisfaction, contributors might include competent resources, an available process, and a flexible and correct product. Sometimes, as with customer satisfaction, factors that contribute to achieving the result can actually be used to develop the results metric. In other words, first determine what contributes to customer satisfaction or dissatisfaction and then it can be measured.

These three of five critical success factors for an effective deployment process are:

Deployment is a series of integrated tasks, which together enable approaches to be effectively implemented.

These integrated tasks are a deployment process that should be customized as needed for each organization and each approach.

Deployment champion(s) is in place.

Someone must take the lead for making the identified approach happen. While the champion can be a highly respected staff member, it is always advantageous for the champion to be a senior manager.

Deployment is a team effort.

A single individual can develop an effective approach, but can rarely deploy that approach. A team of people including instructors, technicians, colleagues and management must implement the deployment process.

Baselines should be quantitative even if it is a subjective measure, but quantitatively subjective. For example, because quality conformance and nonconformance must be defined by people, we are looking for ways to put this information into a quantifiable format. This does not convey a lot of information, but it is indicative of a problem. However, if we develop a five-point scale for unresponsiveness, and ask your dissatisfied customer to complete that scale, we now have conveyed a lot more information. If our scale rates “1” as very poor service, and “5” as very good service, there is a great deal of difference between a “1” rating and a “3” rating for dissatisfaction.

1 - Baselining is defining the current level of performance. For example, the number of defects currently contained in a thousand lines of code is usually calculated quantitatively and can be used to measure improvement.

2 – Develop a clearly defined baseline in your organization - This means that all of the attributes involved in your baseline are defined. In our example of defects per lines of code, clearly defining what is meant by defect and a line of code would meet the objective of this step.

3 - Process Benchmarking - This benchmark is used to plan for business process improvement, and is documented as part of business plans and quality improvement projects.

Improving process is most effective when the users of that process are involved in improving the process. The users of the process know the strengths and weaknesses of the process; they know the type of process changes that can facilitate the use of the process.

Process improvement in most organizations is performed by a team of stakeholders. The stakeholders are those individuals who have a vested interest in improving the process. The organization and operation of the team, is the same as any other team. The preceding section has addressed the team dynamics. They are applicable to process improvement teams.

Incorporating risk management into the software development life cycle includes planning at the following levels:

Long-Term or High-Level

This level includes both long range planning, and optimizing the organization's mix of projects in order to obtain a balance.

Medium-Term or Medium-Level

This level deals with project management strategies, project evaluation, and selection and project portfolio management

Short-Term or Low-Level

This level includes development, integration and testing strategies.

The most important step of the acquisition life cycle is contractor selection. This step has the same importance in the acquisition life cycle as the systems design step has in the system development life cycle. It is determined during this step whether or not the purchased application meets the needs of the organization. During the systems design phase, the needs are translatedinto systems design specifications. During selection those needs are translated into contractual requirements.

Selecting the right organization to develop software is critical to successfully outsourcing development. The selection process must find a competent and compatible organization to develop all or part of the software development. What cannot be outsourced is the responsibility for software quality. The following concerns need to be addressed when selecting an outsourced organization.

Assure That Requirements and Contract Criteria are Testable

A common term used for contracting today is performance-based contracting. This means that the performance criteria of the contractor will be defined and once defined, can be monitored and measured.

It is important that all the requirements that will be given to the contractor are testable. That means as much as possible, an objective measurement can be made as to whether or not that requirement or criteria has or has not been met. For example, easy-to-use criteria might specify the type and number of help screens included within the software.

As a general rule, if a requirement or criteria is not testable the contractor has significant discretion on how that requirement or criteria is implemented. It also limits the contractee’s ability to have corrections made without additional cost for a requirement or criteria that does not meet the customer’s need. If it is a testable requirement, it is easy to demonstrate that the contractor has failed to meet the component of the contract.

Assure That the Contractor Has an Adequate Software Development Process

The contractor should provide a certificate indicating what SEI CMMI level they have achieved or equivalent; for example, ISO certified.

Assure That the Contractor Has an Effective Test Process

This responsibility is primarily for contracted developed software. It is important for the quality professional to develop an opinion on the contractor’s ability to deliver software that meets the requirements or criteria in the contract. It can also provide insight on the ability of the contractor to develop software at a reasonable cost. For example, if the test plan indicates that the defect removal efficiency at the requirements phase is 95%, then the quality professional knows that only 5% of the requirement defects will move to the design phase. On the other hand, if the contractor does not begin testing until after the unit is compiled, then there may be extensive rework and potential delays in getting the software on the scheduled date.

Define Acceptance Testing Criteria

The quality professional should not allow COTS or contracted software to be placed into operation without some acceptance testing. If the COTS software is acquired by the Internet orfrom a business college its reliability is questionable, and it may contain viruses. Many organizations do not permit their employees to acquire software from unapproved sources such as the Internet.

The quality professional may or may not be involved in the actual acceptance testing. However, the quality professional must determine that acceptance criteria are developed. It has been demonstrated extensively that the cost of not acceptance testing is normally much greater than the cost of acceptance testing. It only takes a few problems in acquired software to far exceed the cost of acceptance testing.

Static testing is another name for in-process reviewing. It means that the test is being performed without executing the code. Static testing occurs throughout the development life cycle; however, a large part of it takes place during the requirements and design phases in the form of walkthrough inspections, and system reviews. Other examples of static testing include code analyzers or writing analyzers.

There are two types of static tests:

Validation

Validation is testing the software in an operational state. While there are several iterations of testing, they do not occur until the latter part of the system development life cycle. Thus, validation does not take advantage of the control theory stating that the control should be placed as close as possible to where the defect occurs. The most common types of validation are unit testing, integration testing, and system testing. Unit testing tests the smallest operating module ofa system; integration testing tests the connecting logic between the modules/units; and the systemtesting validates that the system executes in the organization's operating environment.

Verification

Verification is the static testing of the system in a nonoperational status. It primarily tests the documentation produced by the project team. The documentation includes requirements, design, code, test, and operating documentation. Verification is performed through a variety of processes, including code analyzers, walkthroughs, reviews, and inspections. These verification processes also interact with the project team, end users, and other interested parties. Level 2 also incorporates acceptance testing, in which the end users define the criteria, which the system must meet in order to, be acceptable, and then test against those criteria.

Very few individuals can differentiate between quality control and quality assurance. Most quality assurance groups, in fact, practice quality control. This section differentiates between the two, and describes how to recognize a control practice from an assurance practice.

Quality means meeting requirements and meeting customer needs, which means a defect-free product from both the producer’s and the customer’s viewpoint. Both quality control and quality assurance are used to make quality happen. Of the two, quality assurance is the more important.

Quality is an attribute of a product. A product is something produced, such as a requirement document, test data, source code, load module or terminal screen. Another type of product is a service that is performed, such as meetings with customers, help desk activities and training sessions. Services are a form of products, and therefore, also contain attributes. For example, an agenda might be a quality attribute of a meeting.

A process is the set of activities that is performed to produce a product. Quality is achieved through processes. Processes have the advantage of being able to replicate a product time and time again. Even in data processing, the process is able to replicate similar products with the same quality characteristics.

Quality Assurance (QA) is associated with a process. Once processes are consistent, they can "assure" that the same level of quality will be incorporated into each product produced by that process.

Quality Control (QC) is defined as the processes and methods used to compare product quality to requirements and applicable standards, and the action taken when a nonconformance is detected. QC uses reviews and testing to focus on the detection and correction of defects before shipment of products.

Brainstorming

Brainstorming is a technique used to quickly generate a quantity of creative or original ideas on or about a process, problem, product, or service. Brainstorming can be used to:

Develop a vision

Review inputs, outputs, and flows of existing processes

Create a list of products or services

Eliminate wasteful and redundant work activities

Reengineer a process, product, or service

Design a new or improved process

Establish standards, guidelines, or measures

Identify the internal and external customers served

Improve the work environment

Gather data for use with other tools

Affinity Diagram

The affinity diagram is an orderly extension of a structured brainstorming session. Teams use this tool to help create order out of chaos, by categorizing large numbers of ideas. Rather than having teams react logically to a group of ideas, this technique helps to identify more creative solutions or to structure ideas for a cause-and-effect diagram.

Nominal Group Technique

The nominal group technique is a structured, facilitated technique where all team members participate by individually ranking ideas, issues, concerns, and solutions, and then achieve consensus by combining the individual rankings.

Cause-and-Effect Diagram

Teams use cause-and-effect diagrams to visualize, clarify, link, identify, and classify possible causes of problems in processes, products, and services. They are also referred to as "fishbone diagrams," “why-why diagrams,” or "Ishikawa diagrams" (after Kaoru Ishikawa, a quality expert from Japan).