Competitive Intelligence ePGP-03

Assignment 2 (Problem Definition Methods)

Submitted to
Prof. Mahesh Narayan, IIMK

Prepared by:
Alok Sinha (Roll No :ePGP-03-095) Parag Vaishnava (Roll No :eMEP-10-052) Nitin Jaiswal (Roll No: ePGP-03-139) Sajan Liyon (Roll No :ePGP-03-156) Sajesh Jyothiprakash (Roll No :ePGP-03-157) Sharon Selvaraj (Roll No: ePGP-03-167)

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Clients Problem
Off late we found that client is not happy with the quality of the software being delivered to them. We applied different problem definition methods to find out more about the problem.

Questions Asked
Who is causing the causing the quality problem, is the person in charge of delivery? Who says quality is a poor? Who are impacted by poor quality of software? What will happen if quality is not improved? What are the symptoms? What are the impacts? Where does this problem occur? Where does this quality have an impact? When did this problem first start occurring? Why is the quality poor? How should the software work? Who are people currently handling the deliverable? What is the impact of the stated problem? Why should the client care? So what? How does this affect the clients business? What will result if this problem continues?

What was the scope of the software delivery? Is the software delivered on time? Are there bugs in the system? Has the system been tested enough? Who are the developers? Is the infrastructure good enough? Is software development methodology robust enough? Who was monitoring/managing the show?

Competitive Intelligence ePGP-03

Is code review done? Are the binaries tested individually? Is the technology used alright?

Root Cause Analysis

We discussed with client as to what they are expecting and then we discussed with various internal stakeholder using the 5 whys method and the below fishbone came out which depicts the cause of poor software quality-

Competitive Intelligence ePGP-03

MECE
After dividing the problem into sub-components we arrived at MECE-

Which when translated in text is as belowPoor Quality of Software Why is quality poor? Is management responsible? Bureaucratic Organization No tech manager No ownership Poor communication Not trained in technology? What methodology used? Lack of phase gates? Prod env. different?

Developers Skills?

Methodology faulty? Code review/Unit test not done? Machine config. Diff?

Competitive Intelligence ePGP-03

How to improve quality? Follow Agile? Is agile the best? Lateral Hires Training Hire better managers? Build Check Lists Automate tests Hire/train developers

Better Monitoring? Fail Safing mechanism?

SIX THINKING HATS

1. WHITE HAT: we have already gathered facts about the problem in terms of MECE and RCA. 2. YELLOW HAT: Only positive outcome each of the actions we are going to take should take us one step ahead in the serious business of quality software deliverable. 3. BLACK HAT: Negative outcome if the loss of customer if we dont amend our track record and loss of revenues. 4. RED HAT: Understand that quality is a big concern and any perception in customers mind about poor quality can have only negative outcomes. 5. GREEN HAT: Think this as an opportunity to improve our processes, build quality check in place. We should be happy that we have customer who is willing to listen to us and ready to give us a second chance. 6. BLUE HAT: We need to act fast to set right what has been done wrong, quality improvement is something which cant be improved overnight, however in short run we can have right set of people with right attitude to engage with customer and try to convince them that poor quality is thing of past and they will very soon witness a sea change in our deliverables. For long term we need to act on facts and try to take one step at a time.