An Executive’s Guide to Software Quality in an Agile Organization: A Continuous Improvement Journey

195 Pages·2019·11.833 MB·English

by  Navid Nader-Rezvani

CA Press
An Executive’s
Guide to Software
Quality in an Agile
Organization
A Continuous Improvement Journey
Navid Nader-Rezvani
AN EXECUTIVE’S GUIDE TO
SOFTWARE QUALITY IN AN
AGILE ORGANIZATION
A CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT JOURNEY
Navid Nader-Rezvani
An Executive’s Guide to Software Quality in an Agile Organization: A Continuous
Improvement Journey
Navid Nader-Rezvani
Los Altos, California, USA
ISBN-13 (pbk): 978-1-4842-3750-2 ISBN-13 (electronic): 978-1-4842-3751-9
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-3751-9
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018953013
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Printed on acid-free paper
This book is dedicated to the loving memory of my
father, Hassan Nader, whose aspirations for me far
exceeded my own. His words of encouragement and
his faith in my ability have kept me going even a few
years after his leaving this world. RIP Dad!
Contents
About the Author                                             vii
About the Technical Reviewer                                   ix
Acknowledgments                                             xi
Preface                                                     xiii
Introduction                                                 xix
Chapter 1: Quality in Agile                                    1
Chapter 2: Worldview and Integral Map                         21
Chapter 3: Perception of Quality                               33
Chapter 4: Quality Challenges in an Agile Team                   45
Chapter 5: Quality Framework                                 95
Chapter 6: Assessment Against NQPs (Navid’s Quality Pillars)     113
Chapter 7: Agile Quality Test Strategy                         121
Chapter 8: Quality Excellence Journey                         139
Chapter 9: Quality at Scale                                   153
Chapter 10: Conclusion and Summary                          171
Index                                                       179
About the Author
Navid Nader-Rezvani is a passionate execu-
tive-engineering leader and an independent con-
sultant with a proven track record as being a
change agent, results oriented, and a customer
advocate. Navid has successfully led multiple
global development and Agile quality organiza-
tions and has spent her career breaking down
silos, reducing redundant effort, and building col-
laborative teams. She has a rare set of leader-
ship skills and a unique way of working across
organizations and time zones to achieve produc-
tivity. Navid has been instrumental in delivering
releases on time, on budget, with high-quality
outcomes. She has a strong passion for diversity,
coaching, mentoring, and volunteering activities
and has presented at various conferences. Navid
received Bachelor and Master of Science degrees in Electrical Engineering
from VA Tech, holds patents, is a certified Scrum Master and SAFe Program
Consultant, and is PMP certified.
Find her at https://www.linkedin.com/in/navid-rezvani-9640826.
About the Technical
Reviewer
Steve Firestone is the General Manager for
Customer Engineering in the Product Organization
spanning the entire CA Technologies product
portfolio. Some of the initiatives in the CX role
include owning product quality and establishing
product feedback via telemetry for CA.
Steve was previously the General Manager for
the Security Business Unit, where he was heavily
engaged in enabling security for cloud, mobile,
and SaaS solutions in the diverse and maturing
routes to market. Prior to the GM role, Steve
led engineering for the Security Business Unit
and before that engineering services for security
in addition to being a distinguished engineer. Steve has been involved with
several corporate strategy initiatives, including big data and analytics. Steve
regularly contributes to merger and acquisition activities. Steve has led the
center of excellence for Swat/Engineering Services across CA, focused on
best practices, knowledge sharing, integration, and innovation opportunities.
Steve has industry experience covering a wide range of technologies and busi-
ness applications and has teamed with several very large organizations and
partners in many different industries. Steve joined CA from a startup and has
been known for having a startup mentality within a large company, having done
a few, including a very successful zero-to-$2-billion enterprise management
solution.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank my husband and my best friend, Mo Rezvani, whose faith
and vote of confidence in my ability to achieve every goal I set for myself has
always kept me going. My two sons, Sabah Rezvani and Parsa Rezvani, have
also been an incredible source of encouragement and inspiration throughout
my career. I wouldn’t be where I am today without their love, support, and
encouragement. Thank you guys; you mean the world to me!
I would also like to thank the rest of my family, especially my mother, Effat
Nader, who taught me to work hard, have faith, and never give up!
In addition, I would like to acknowledge a team of extremely knowledgeable
individuals in the field of Agile and Quality Engineering who have spent many
hours reviewing various concepts in this book and providing their invaluable
feedback. In particular, I would like to thank the following individuals:
• Steve Firestone, whose trust in my ability to engrave quality
in the DNA of organizations helped me in multiple stages
of my career. He is also the technical reviewer for the
book. I am grateful for his focus on this review and fitting
it into his extremely busy schedule!
• Dipto Chakravarty, who has always been my strong advocate
and a great supporter. His mentorship and ability to focus
on my strengths and promote them have taught me a
great deal about myself! His subtle references to key
quality-impacting areas helped me organize key points
and introduce the Five NQPs.
• Rohit Shivram, for his invaluable feedback and thorough
review of all chapters.
• Bob Winter, for spending time reviewing details of Agile
and perception of quality and providing great feedback
based on his own experience in writing his book.
• Sandeep Ramnani, Arun Ramakrishnan, Patty Harasta,
Rabeya Akhter, and many other quality-passionate cur-
rent and former colleagues who have always helped me
with quality grassroots initiatives. Their encouragement,
willingness to go beyond, and help in reviewing various
sections of the book are much appreciated.
xii Acknowledgments
• Connie Smallwood and Karen Sleeth, who encouraged
me to undertake the book-proposal process.
• Sinead Condon, for delivering a great workshop on
Worldview and Integral Map. Her review of the WV and
Integral Map chapter and highlighting of how quality inte-
gral mapping fits well with the Agile quality journey focus
of this book were a great help.
• Various customers at different companies who opened
up my view of the world to see that quality is much more
than just “defects.” Customers’ perception of quality led
to my holistic approach in looking at quality.
• A writer always needs a good editorial team. Thank you
to the editors and publishing advisors: Laura, Rita, and
Susan at Apress.
• Last, but not least, I would like to thank all of you for
picking up this book and reading through this. I hope that
this quality journey resonates with you and you are able
to use key concepts in this book to help make quality an
integral part of your organization.
I am looking forward to receiving your feedback and hope that, together, we
can reshape the perception of quality and realize that it is not someone else’s
job to own quality!
Preface
You may be wondering why, in creating this book, I have chosen a topic that
is known to everyone and considered common sense. Culture of quality is
not a new concept, and it is not unique to the software world. The key focus
here will be on the mindset transformation and internalization of the culture
of quality, which is a bit complex. Engraving it into the DNA of a team, an
organization, and the enterprise level will be what is needed to be successful
in establishing such a culture.
Throughout my career, I have been fascinated with how placing quality and
customers at the center would create happier teams, happier customers, and
greater value at a faster pace, as well as generate higher revenue. Demand for
software quality is further intensified by the ever-increasing dependence of
our world on software.
If you have ever been in a situation where your organization was consumed
with attending to a high volume of customer escalations, had challenges with
on-time and on-quality releases, or had unhappy and even dysfunctional inter-
nal teams and customers, this is the book for you! You will get exposed to
practical guidelines from personal experiences on how to reduce the backend
of the release, improve the Net Promoter Survey (NPS) scores that enhance
revenue, increase customer satisfaction, and reduce the number of customer
escalations significantly.
In this book, I share real-life experiences and examples where a focus on holis-
tic quality allowed teams to enjoy significant benefits, such as:
• NPS improvement greater than 200 percent
• Automation coverage improvement greater than 60
percent
• Annual customer escalations reduction by greater than
90 percent
• MTTR (Mean Time to Resolution) reduction by greater
than 30 percent