A fellow today told me that, as part of his company’s quality program, the people in his department have to fill out a survey at the end of every project. The survey is on the order of 50 questions long. The answers are in multiple choice format, so there one could garner some data from it, but relatively little information.
I asked him if they had considered modifying the survey. He said that Yes, they had, but the business improvement department wouldn’t let them.
A three-day public offering of Rapid Software Testing, and a keynote talk at the Conference on Free Testing Tools, sponsored by the Norwegian Computer Society, in Trondheim, Norway, March 22-26, 2010.
A three-day public offering of Rapid Software Testing in Berlin, Germany, March 29-31, 2010. It's sponsored by Testing Experience.
A three-day session of Rapid Software Testing, plus a day of free consulting, for a corporate client in Colorado Springs, CO, April 12-15.
Presentations at the third annual Kitchener-Waterloo Software Quality Association's conference, April 21, 2010.
I'll be at the Workshop on Performance and Reliability, one of the longest-running of the peer conferences, which this year is being held in Montreal, Quebec. James Bach is the content owner.
"I Wouldn't Have Seen It If I Hadn't Believed It: Confirmation Bias in Testing", a track session on Thursday, April 29 at the STAR East Conference, Orlando, Florida. The conference runs from Monday through Friday, April 26-30, 2010.
A three-day public offering of Rapid Software Testing in Berlin, Germany, March 29-31, 2010. This one is sponsored by Electromind.
I'll be assisting Cem Kaner as he presents his Black Box Software Testing class here in Toronto for TASSQ, the Toronto Association of System and Software Quality. This is a rare opportunity. You can get more information here. This class, the basis for the online courses offered by the Association for Software Testing is rarely offered live and in person.
Agile Testing Days in Berlin, October 4-7, 2010.
You can find an extensive list of presentations and courses that I've taught, including the slides and speaker notes for many of them, here.
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In a similar vein, some years ago there was a self-congradulatory piece in Crosstalk by a defense software shop that had done a CMM / process thing for a couple years. It looks like they did some real good with that exercise, actually. That’s not the point.
The article was based on a survey, where among other things they trumpeted their 20% or so response rate. This is outstanding for anonymous surveys. For your own organization, people you’ve been working with intensely for a couple years, it’s pretty lame. For replies from the folks doing the work, to the folks driving work practice improvement, tools & etc. it’s bad.
Then, I noticed that the organization was about 35 people. Maybe 50 if you cound the process-y and audit folks.
The most interesting stuff from this survey – information, I think:
- Fifty people. What’s with a survey? How about you go talk to them?
- Couple years working together on process improvement, and they don’t seem real interested, do they?
- Why the survey? Don’t you know? Isn’t it your job to know?
Every observation will include real information that points directly and immediately to what is going on, if you pay attention. This particular survey pointed out that something wasn’t working, that the folks involved were missing the point, and that any conclusions from the survey itself were highly suspect.
ha , its like asking the new joinee to take up a survey as to why he liked that company … after the long survey … he changes his mind !