Past Meetings 1998

Reflexion Models
November 1998
Reflexion Models are a software system summarization technique for reverse engineering tasks to understand the structure of large software systems. When the system has been modeled, project options can be determined such as assessing the feasibility of reusing the back-end of a compiler with an existing graphical front-end development environment. A reflexion model can be produced in a timely and low-cost fashion since the technique is lightweight; an engineer has often been able to specify the inputs and compute a software reflexion model in about an hour. Learn how the software reflexion model tools were used by a Microsoft engineer on an experimental reengineering of the Excel codebase.
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David Notkin, Ph.D.
Professor Notkin is a faculty member in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington where his teaching and research interests are in software engineering, with a particular focus in software evolution -- understanding why software is so hard and expensive to change, and reducing those difficulties. He came to Seattle in 1984 after receiving a bachelor's degree from Brown University and a Ph.D. from Carnegie-Mellon University. Among numerous awards and grants, he has been awarded a NSF Presidential Young Investigator Award. He was a visiting faculty member at Tokyo Institute of Technology and Osaka University; and in 1997-98 was a visiting researcher at the IBM Haifa Research Laboratory.

Software Inspection
October 1998
Increase your value by 10, 24, or even 100 times by finding defects as early as possible in the development process. Mark will give an overview of the Inspection process and then ask for your help in selling this concept to harried managers and developers.
PowerPoint v7 presentation (597KB)

Mark Bullock
Mark worked as a developer for 12 years and has been working as a tester for the last three years, currently on Atrieva's online backup service. He used Inspections constantly for seven years. Mark has managed a development team and was actually asked to slow down one development project.

Adding SPICE to Your Process Assessments
September 1998
ISO 15504 is an emerging international standard for software engineering process assessment. Commonly known as SPICE (Software Process Improvement and Capability dEtermination), this new standard incorporates best practices from around the world, including CMM, Trillium, Bootstrap, and Process Professional.

Learn about the standard: what it is (and isn't), how it can be used, and why it may be important to know about in the very near future.  Learn about practical applications of SPICE, its two-dimensional reference model, its use with a variety of assessment models -- and how the Software Engineering Institute is responding to SPICE.  You'll see a demonstration of an automated tool for collecting and reporting on assessment data in a variety of ways.
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Michael Brooks, CPSA, CSTE
Michael Brooks, CPSA, CSTE is a Principal Consultant with DMR Consulting Group Inc., an Amdahl company. A Certified Provisional SPICE Assessor, Mr. Brooks has over 14 years experience in information systems. He was an architect of the Integration Test organization within Boeing Commercial Airplane Group. As Task Lead for Computer Sciences Corporation, he introduced structured software testing methodology to the Environmental Protection Agency’s Region 10 office in Seattle. In addition to serving as Chair of the Education Committee of the Seattle Area Software Quality Assurance Group (SASQAG), he is currently working on a project to develop a Quality Assurance & Testing Practice for the Pacific Northwest business unit of DMR. The practice will provide to clients high-level consulting services in the areas of software engineering process assessments such as SEI/CMM and ISO 15504 (SPICE) and software testing. An experienced business process architect and project manager, Mr. Brooks’ current client engagement for DMR is a process reengineering effort for Boeing’s Integrated Systems Processes & Infrastructure (ISPI) project.

Server-side Development Issues
August 1998
Change control is one of the toughest problems in database server development! Most developers tend to use the same machine for development, test, and production. Seldom do they use different servers and/or introduce a QA process. We will discuss web servers, transaction servers, database servers, and definition of the problem of a QA process in that context.

Ron Talmage, MSCD
Ron is a SQL server DBA and developer with GTE Enterprise Solutions and a SQL Server instructor for ST Labs. He earned MCP certifications in SQL Server Administration, Database Design, and Visual FoxPro, and also is a Microsoft Certified Solution Developer (MCSD). Ron has over 15 years experience in software design and programming, including 8 years of teaching computing at the college level. He has developed database applications in real estate software, computer telephony, and public health research. Ron developed and currently teaches the SQL Server 6.5 for Testers course at Microsoft. He is active in local database SIGs, writes articles on MS SQL Server, and is writing a book on SQL Server 7.0 for Prima Publishing.

Cost of Quality
The "Bottom Line" of Quality
July 1998
Cost of Quality provides management with a measurable way of administering Quality. If you can't measure it, you can't manage it! Quality can be expensive (and is in most organizations). Between 25 to 50% of each sales dollar is spent on Quality. When these values are known, they can be reduced and the difference may be added to the bottom line.
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L. Daniel Crowley, CSTE, CCP
Daniel Crowley has been a promoter of Cost of Quality for over 10 years. He has worked as a quality engineering consultant for over 20 years throughout the United States. He was an examiner for the Washington State Quality Award. Daniel has taught Information Systems topics at several colleges for 10 years. He also published many quality related articles in his own column in the Kitsap Business Journal. Daniel has worked as a quality engineer in aerospace, manufacturing, small business and the financial/insurance industries. He most recently returned from Ireland where he was a speaker to the Irish Computer Society on Y2K. He was a speaker at the QAI Seattle Software Quality Conference.

Steve Neuendorf
Steve has spent fourteen years in software engineering metrics and process improvement, and the 15 years before that in various consulting, teaching, industrial engineering, and cost and management accounting positions. Steve is experienced with Function Point Analysis (FPA). He has designed and implemented processes that use FPA for management and improvement of activities and processes. Steve is well versed in the Software Engineering Institute's Capability Maturity Model. Steve is familiar with ISO 9000 standards and their use and has worked extensively with ASME commercial and nuclear quality standards.

Market Driven Software Testing vs Rapid Application Development Testing
May 1998
What Software Development methodology should you use to get the level of quality needed? How does the Software Development methodology impact testing? What are the issues, concerns and risks in testing a project using these Software Development methodology? Two experienced software testers share and debate software testing using Software Development methodologies.

Panel Discussion

Jametha Smith-Bowles
Microsoft
Jametha Smith-Bowles is a Software Test Engineer for the Mac Office Group. Prior to her current position, she was the head QA Engineer testing all products at Don Johnston Incorporated, a leading manufacturer of software and hardware for users with physical and cognitive disabilities. She is a member of ACM/SIGGRAPH/SIGCAPH and is committed to insuring that the features and products she tests are useful to every person without exception.

John Vu
The Boeing Company
John is one of the Northwest's most knowledgeable CMM experts!

Mike Powers
Senior Consultant at ST Labs, and their Y2K Specialist

Cem Kaner   www.kaner.com
Senior Author: Testing Computer Software
Cem also practices law focused on software quality and is a university software testing instructor.

QAI's Effective Methods of Software Testing
August 1997
A SASQAG Perspective
PowerPoint presentation (785KB).

John Napier