http://blogs.embarcadero.com/chrispattinson Director of Quality Assurance, Embarcadero Wed, 06 Apr 2011 22:36:20 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en-US In the past month I've been helping a very large, worldwide distributed project (not RAD for those wondering - something new you'll see soon) with several systems, focus on both quality and scope to a release date.  The team is passionate; it's one of the things I love about working in Embarcadero engineering.   In ... http://blogs.embarcadero.com/chrispattinson/2011/04/06/39072 Ongoing goals of the QA organization are to: Keep test cycles as quick as possible. Drive towards high levels of test coverage. Provide concise and informative reports on test results.  Provide the most important feedback first. While many product teams have a mature automated test system in place, there are several opportunities for improvement.  A couple years back, I defined the ... http://blogs.embarcadero.com/chrispattinson/2011/01/26/39047 At Embarcadero, we take quality of our products VERY seriously, and are always seeking to focus efforts to providing the best tools to help you succeed in your work.  One of our methods to assess how we did is to collect information from our customers in an annual quality focused survey. Earlier this ... http://blogs.embarcadero.com/chrispattinson/2011/01/21/39030 Recently I've been reading up on posts from various QA boards and newsgroups, and often I see newer Software QA engineers making comments about automated testing and wondering why management is pushing so hard for "more automation". I'd like to share a few thoughts from my own experience as to what's ... http://blogs.embarcadero.com/chrispattinson/2011/01/06/39024 Tis the season to don my chef hat and bake up a storm.  At this time of year I'm usually doing at least 4 types of cookies, and typically a pumpkin cheesecake for the family. This morning while driving in, I started to think how the art of baking cookies relates ... http://blogs.embarcadero.com/chrispattinson/2010/12/21/39020 Recently I've been joining QA and Test related groups found on LinkedIn to try and extend my view of "what's going on" in the rest of the industry.  One is simply called "Software Testing and QA" and has had some really interested content in the past month. One of them is ... http://blogs.embarcadero.com/chrispattinson/2010/12/17/39016 Every so often, I am asked how Embarcadero leverages the many popular standards such as ISO, IEEE, CMMI and Six Sigma. These are really great resources, and I'd like to spend a few minutes introducing them, and talking about how we apply the concepts and principles at Embarcadero. IEEE promotes advancement in ... http://blogs.embarcadero.com/chrispattinson/2010/12/01/39012 Possibly one of the less known "really cool" features in Delphi XE and RAD XE are the built in audits and metrics allowing a developer to do code analysis. There are at least couple great sources describing this -  RAD Studio XE and Code Reviews: Moving from Subjective to Objective in Seconds! [Doc Link] ... http://blogs.embarcadero.com/chrispattinson/2010/11/12/39001 Michael Froh, one of the R&D managers at Embarcadero suggested a fairly new book called "Making Software" a couple weeks ago. He knows I'm quite interested in continuous improvement, and even more so - studies and data on what other companies have found worked for them. Like component re-use, learning from ... http://blogs.embarcadero.com/chrispattinson/2010/11/09/38997 Looking through our testing reference materials, I realized it's hard to get a picture of all the activities that go into the release certification process.  I put together the following diagram showing primary categories of testing, to help in the high level planning for a release. (Click on the image to ... http://blogs.embarcadero.com/chrispattinson/2010/10/13/38988