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TABLE 8-8. Sample question analysis from the “Quality” section of a postmortem report

Beta
Was the beta test effective in heading off problems before clients found them?
Score: 2.28 out of 5 (12 Negative [1 to 2], 13 Neutral [3], 9 Positive [4 to 5])
All of the comments we got about the beta were negative, and only 26% (9 of 34) of the survey respondents felt that the
beta exceeded their expectations. The general perception was that many obvious defects were not caught in the beta.
Suggestions for improvement included lengthening the beta, expanding it to more client sites, and ensuring that the
software was used as if it were in production.
Individual comments:
• I feel like Versions 2.0 and 2.1 could have been in the beta field longer so that we might have discovered the
accounting bugs before many of the clients did.
• We need to have a more in-depth beta test in the future. Had the duration of the beta been longer, we would have
caught more problems and headed them off before they became critical situations at the client site.
• I think that a lot of problems that were encountered were found after the beta, during the actual start of the release.
Shortly thereafter, things were ironed out.
• Overall, the release has gone well. I just feel that we missed something in the beta test, particularly the performance
issues we are experiencing in our Denver and Chicago branches. In the future, we can expand the beta to more sites.

Once the postmortem report has been compiled, the project manager should call a meet-
ing to review it. The attendees should include project team members, stakeholders, users,
and any other people who were asked to respond to the survey. The meeting should be a
walkthrough (see Chapter 5) of the report. The project manager should write down sug-
gestions or comments that are brought up during the meeting.
The final section of the report is an action list, which should be added after the postmor-
tem meeting. Throughout the review, there will be many recommendations suggested by
stakeholders, team members, and other people. The project manager should work with
everyone at the meeting to identify specific actions that can be taken to make sure those
recommendations are implemented. If possible, he should gain a real commitment to
those actions, if the right people are there; if not, he should commit to following up on
each of them, in order to make sure that the next project is performed better. By writing
down the list of specific actions to take and including the commitments that people make
during the meeting, the project manager can ensure that those changes are incorporated
into future projects.

Using Software Testing Effectively

Software testing is often the most difficult area of software development for a project man-
ager to put in place because, unlike other disciplines of software engineering, many people
have a negative attitude toward it. Some people think that good programmers simply
don’t write bugs, so if they hire good programmers, then they don’t need testers. Others
only see software testing as something that holds back development. However, there are
many organizations where software testing is used as an effective tool for reducing project
schedules and increasing user satisfaction. If a project manager works to combat the nega-
tive attitudes about testing, he can achieve these results on his own projects.

SOFTWARE TESTING 189