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Defect
Prevention
A
formal software defect prevention process is the logical complement to software
appraisals. In organizations that have effective defect prevention processes,
defects found in the appraisals, testing, and operations are recorded and
analyzed using Six Sigma techniques. The results of the analysis are use to
select and prioritize categories of defects for early detection or outright
prevention. The typical prevention mechanisms are changes to the
standards covering requirements, design, coding, and testing. These standards
changes are used to “mistake-proof” (poka-yoke) the development process in
order to prevent reoccurrence of the target defect types.
Typical
mechanisms for early detection are changes to inspection checklists, the
inspection process, and the testing process.
Defect
prevention is a team activity. It can be very effective at reducing cost and
improving quality. It can also
greatly improve the yield of the appraisal processes.
When an organization institutes a defect prevention process, it puts the
responsibility of analyzing and acting on defect data squarely in the lap of its
development teams. This promotes an
understanding the costs of the team’s defects and challenges the team to
prevent the defects in the first place, by taking ownership of product quality.
It drives home the economics of high quality design and the value of the
inspection process. It motivates
collection of high quality measurements. And
it creates an efficient closed-loop system where feedback is continually used to
optimize the design and inspection processes.
Using
a formal Defect Prevention process to eliminate common defects can dramatically
improve productivity and product quality. In
particular, there is a huge payback to preventing requirement errors. Most
organizations have ample opportunity for quick improvement in this area.
Inspections
and Defect Prevention form a highly synergistic pair of processes.
Inspections provide the defect data necessary to drive the defect
prevention process.
Using the inspection data regularly for defect prevention activities
motivate the developer to record complete and accurate defect data.
Effective defect prevention lowers the cost of inspections (by
eliminating or minimizing the need to inspect for whole classes of defects) and
testing (by reducing the number of defects found during test) To get the full
benefit of this synergy, PS&J recommends introducing defect prevention three
to six month after introducing inspections.
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