Trying to get non-responsive members of the team be more schedule sensitive

We know this problem, it happens all the time. You have different members of the team, some more disciplined and some less disciplined. Actually discipline is the wrong word. When you have creative members of the team, or team members who are attached to multiple projects, then there can be problems with respect to scheduling of their deliverables. In the case of team members such as User Interface Designers or Visual Experts, or Visual Designers, they typically do not move to the same beat as that of the rest of the project teams, such as Engineers or Testing Engineers.
This can be problematic for the rest of the team, since schedules are interlinked to each other. For example, the User Interface Designer would prepare design specifications that are used by the team members to discuss and finalize the feature workflow and the technical architecture. These are then developed and passed onto the testing team which does the testing and then releases the feature. However, if the initial design does not come in time, then the rest of the schedule will get impacted.
One of the problems that I have experienced with User Designers or similar creative people is that they do not work in pieces; they would like to look at the overall workflow for the product and then release a completed design. But the team does not work like this, it would like workflow designs feature by feature, so that the work can be done feature by feature (and it makes logical sense).
Another option that could have been postulated is that the Workflow Designer could have a period of 2-3 months before the start of the cycle, so that the Designer gets enough time to make the design. This seems logical, but there are problems in this. The Workflow Designer does not work entirely on his / her own, but needs to work with the Product Manager and the team members (the team members  are involved so that the team could figure out the technical cost of doing the Workflow designs; some of these workflows may take more time and effort than other workflows and the contribution of the technical team in figuring out these is critical. This process can be iterative).
So how do you work out trying to get such more creative members as part of the process?
- First and foremost, it is necessary to ensure that you do not make the assumption that these resources understand the critical nature of meeting their schedule deliveries. It would be needed to spend much more time with these people and form a detailed plan for deliveries, doing this discussion multiple times till an understanding has been formed.
- In my experience, it was also necessary to have 2 dates in the schedule with a few dates gap between the 2 dates. It was necessary to push the delivery to happen for the first date, but there was also the understanding that the delivery happening on the 2nd date would also work fine without threatening the schedule.
- It was also realized that there was the need for a regular reminder along with checking about state of progress and updating the rest of the team on such progress. So, the Project Manager had setup a weekly meeting with the workflow designer to discuss the state of progress and the deliverable, and figure out alternatives if there was a delay.

What is Polling?

- Polling is often referred to as the polled operation.

- When the statuses of the external devices are actively sampled by a client program just like a synchronous activity is referred to as the polling. 

- The common use of the polling is in the input and output operations. 

- In rare cases, polling is also called as the software driven I/O or just simply as polled I/O. 

- As and when required, polling is also carried out with the busy waiting synonymous. 

- Polling is then referred to as the busy–wait polling. 

- In this case whenever it is required to carry out an input/ output operation, the system just checks the status of the device required for fulfilling this operation until it is idle. 

- When it becomes idle it is accessed by the I/O operation. 

- Such polling may also refer to a state in which the status of the device is checked again and again for accessing it if idle. 

- If the device is occupied, the system is forced to return to some other pending task. 

- In this case the CPU time is wasted less when compared to what happens in busy waiting. 

- However, this is not a better alternative to interrupt driven I/O polling. 

- In single purpose systems that are too simple, using busy-wait polling is perfectly fine if the system cannot take any action until the I/O device has been accessed. 

- But traditionally, the polling was thought to be a consequence of the operating systems and simple hardware that do not support multitasking. 

- The polling works intimately with the low level hardware usually. 

- For example, a parallel printer port can be polled for checking whether or not it is ready for printing another character. 

- This involves just the examination of a bit. 

- The bit to be examined represents the high or low voltage stage of the single wire in the cable of the printer during the time of reading. 

- The I/O instruction by which this byte is read is also responsible for transferring the voltage state directly to the eight flip flops or circuits. 

- These 8 flip flops together constitute one byte of a register of CPU. 

Polling also has a number of disadvantages. 

- One is that there is limited time for servicing the I/O devices. 

- Polling has to be done within this time period only. 

- But in some cases there are many devices to be checked which cause the polling time to exceed the given limit. 

- The host keeps on hitting the busy bit until the device becomes idle or clear. 

- When the device is idle, the state is written in to the command register and also in the data out register. 

- The command ready bit is set to 1. 

- The controller sets the busy bit once it knows that the command ready bit has been set.  

- After reading from the command register, the controller carries out the required I/O operation on the device. 

- On the other hand, if the read bit has been set to one, the controller loads the device data in to the data in register. 

- This data is further read by the host. 

- Once the whole action has been completed, the command ready bit is cleared by the controller. 

- The error bit is also cleared for showing that the operation has been completed successfully. 

- At the end the busy bit is also set.

- Polling can be seen in the terms of master slave scenario where the master sends inquiring about the working status slave devices i.e., whether they are clear or engaged. 

Working on items in your status report that are critical and moving them to a green status

For a good Project manager or Program Manager, maintaining the status of the project is one of the most critical items that they need to do. The status of the project is a dashboard that reflects on the status of the various risks and issues that may be faced by the project, and which can cause delay or otherwise imperil the schedule of the project.
For any project, there are a large number of items that can cause problems to the schedule of the project, but not all of them are problematic at the same time. A risk or issue may be small or minimal at some point in the project and be much more significant at another stage of the project, and it is upto the project manager to have the current status of the project in hand at all stages of the project.
So, you have a situation where the project manager already has a listing of all the major items or issues that can cause a risk to the project and is also on the lookout for more such issues that could cause risk, and it is very important that the project manager highlights the risks that are significant at this point of time and brings them up to the attention of the management team of the product.
But it is not just the highlighting of the risks that is a primary job of the project manager. The project manager is not just somebody who reports the issues and risks of the project, but also takes the lead in trying to solve the risks / issues. For this purpose, the project manager needs to have a good understanding of the risks / issues and work with the relevant people for understanding how the risk needs to be mitigated. This needs to be followed by actually working out the mitigation plan (and if these are known risks or issues that were known even before they were actually a risk, then the mitigation plan would already be known) and ensuring that the mitigation plan is as per the actual risk, since even for a known issue, the actual mitigation plan depends on the exact scenario in which the problem occurred.
In some cases, the mitigation plan does not depend on only the team but may need help from outside the team. For example, there may be a situation where the team is behind in the schedule and needs more people helping out the team, and this cannot be solved by the team; the similar is the case when there is a dependency which needs a resolution from outside the team. In such cases, the project manager should bring this plan to the management team of the product where it can even be escalated to outside the team and to senior management if required. It is the responsibility of the project manager to drive this process and reach a point where the plan has helped in reducing the critical status items of the project to less than critical where they can then be managed to become a normal problem.

What are benefits of agile process improvement?

Agile methodologies that we have today are a resultant of the experiences gained from the real life projects that were undertaken by the leading software professionals. These professionals were thorough with the challenges and limitations imposed by the traditional development methodologies on various projects. 

- The agile process improvement directly addresses the issues of the traditional development methods both in terms of processes and philosophy behind it. 

- Agile process improvement provides a simple framework to the development teams suiting varying scenarios while focusing up on the fast delivery of the business values. 

- With all these benefits of the agile process improvements, the organizations have been able to reduce the associated overall risk with the development of the project. 

- The delivery of the initial business values is accelerated well by the agile process improvement. 

- This is achieved through a process of constant planning and feedback. 

- Agile process improvement ensures that the business values are maximized throughout the development process. 

- With the API’s iterative planning plus feedback loop, it becomes possible for teams to align the software process with the business needs as required. 

- Another major benefit of the agile process is that the software development process can adapt to the ever–changing requirements of the process and business. 

- By taking a measure and evaluation of the status based up on the amount of work and testing done, visibility can be obtained to a more accurate value. 

- The final result of the agile process improvement is a software system that is capable of addressing the customer requirements and the business in a much better way. 

- By following an agile process improvement program, not only just deployable, tested and working software can be delivered on an incremental basis but also increased visibility, adaptability and values are delivered earlier in the software development life cycle. 

- This proves to be a great thing in reducing the risk associated with the project. 

- There are a number of problems with the traditional development methods. 

- In a research it was found that the waterfall style development methodology was the major factor in the contribution of failure of the software. 

- Some other software could not meet the real needs. 

- They had the inability in dealing with the changing requirements and late integration. 

- All this has proven that the traditional development methods prove to be risky as well as a costly way for building software. 

- Thus the majority of the industry has turned towards agile development.

- There is a continuous feedback input from the customers and a face to face communication among all the stake holders. 

- The business needs associated with the agile process improvement are ever changing. 

- Organizations want quick results from what they invest. 

- They want their improvement programs to keep pace with these changing business needs. 

- The agile process improvement is composed of several mechanisms using which all this can be achieved. 

- Working iteratively lets you deliver the product before the deadline to the customer. 

- It lets you deliver only the things are actually required i.e., it does not let you waste your time on the un-required things. 

- Also, early and regular feedback from the customer lets you deliver the product with quality as desired by the customer.

- Agile projects are distributive in nature i.e., the work is divided among people. 

- Agile software development is still an immature process and there is a need for improving it for the betterment of the software industry. 

- Agile process improvement is one way to do this.

What is Reporter.ReportEvent? What is GetRoProperty? (In QTP)

In this article we are going to discuss regarding the two main things namely:

1. Reporter. Report event and
2. GetRoproperty

As far as the purpose of the reporter object is concerned it is used for sending or reporting the information to the results of the test. With a reporter object the following tasks can be performed:

1. For reporting of the status of the results of the tests like success, failure, warning, error and so on.
2. For enabling or disabling reporting of the steps that immediately follow the executed statement.
3. For retrieving the folder path where the results of the current tests can be stored.
4. For retrieving the execution status at the current point of the execution process.

There are many methods and properties that are associated with the reporter object and the reporter. Report event is one of them. 

Those methods and properties are as mentioned below:

1. Reporter event method
2. Filter property
3. Run status property

Here the thing to be discussed is about the first one i.e., the reporter event method in detail. 

- This is the most commonly method that is used with the help of a reporter object. 

- It is certain that even if one has worked on quick test professional for a very short period of time then he/ she might have come across the use of this object. 

- The syntax for using this object is as mentioned below:

Reporter. Reportevent event status, report step name, details [, image file path]

The event status can be one of the following:

1. Mic Pass or 0: If the test step passes the run.
2. Mic Fail or 1: If the test step fails the run.
3. Mic done or 2: If the status of the test is not affected by the run of the test step.
4. Mic warning or 3: If the status of the test is not affected by the run of the test step and a warning has to be issued.

- Next step i.e., the report step name represents the name of the step that is currently being executed. 

- The last aspect i.e., the details represent the details of the step as defined by the user. 

- The reporter. Report event can be used for reporting of the custom steps in the test results of the quick test professional.

- After the tests have been executed, the results can be stored in a text file or in an xls file via VBScript library functions. 

- It can be considered to be a kind of reporting mechanism of the quick test professional. 

- As the name itself specifies it means reporting an event to the test results. 

What is GetRoProperty in QTP?

- The GetRoproperty is used basically for the following two tasks:

1. For returning the run time value or the current value of the test object property from the objects present in the software system or application.
2. For retrieving the current property value during the run session of the object present in the software system or application.

- Actually GetRoProperty is one of the 4 methods provided by the quick test professional for working on the test object repositories and the other 3 are:

1. GetToProperty
2. SetToProperty
3. GetToProperties

- Most of the developers often get confused with these methods and do not use the appropriate method for the situation. 

- For employing either of these methods, it is important that you should know and understand the details of the test object properties which can be identified by the quick test professional as a standard set of properties. 

If the bug is found, what should be done ?

Test cases are written to detect if a feature of an application is working correctly. It is a document which consists of input, action and expected output. After a bug is found, the developers are informed about the bug and are asked to fix it. After it gets fixed, the module is re-tested and it is checked whether it has not created any problem.

- Information of the bug and its severity.
- Bug identifier.
- Bug status.
- Application name.
- The name of the module, function, object etc. where the bug occurred.
- Environment factors.
- Test case name and identifier.
- One line bug description.
- Full bug description.
- If the bug is not covered by test case, steps are described again.
- Names of file used in test.
- Severity level
- Can the bug be reproduced.
- Tester name and test date.
- Name of developer.
- Description of cause of the problem.
- Description of the fix.
- Date of fix.
- Application version that contains the fix.
- Description about tester.
- Date of retest.
- Results of retest.
- Requirements of regression testing.
- Tester who has done regression tests.
- Results of regression testing.

Sometimes, the software is so buggy that it becomes impossible to test it. In order to handle this type of situation, the testers should report whatever bugs they are coming across, focusing more on critical bugs. It depicts deeper problems in the software development process.