M C Nagaraj
Fine-tuning your existing Test Process to move-up in Test Maturity Model (TMM)
The organizations have moved from “assemble a testing team on need basis” to “a focused independent testing team” over years. It is quite natural that the test process to run the organization also has changed drastically to address the entire test life cycle process covering different aspects of process engineering:
- Methods and procedures
- Technology and tools
- People
Organizations involved in software development normally choose standard models like ISO 9001, CMMI, and SPICE as framework to improve their software development life cycle process. Most of these models do not adequately address testing issues though there are attempts in every new version. Because of the important role of testing in software process and product quality, and the limitations of existing process assessment models, Ilene Burnstein at Illinois Institute of Technology developed the Testing Maturity Model. This model helps organizations to introduce best practices in progressive way and assess the capability and maturity of test process against a set of standards goals.
M. C. Nagaraj is Director- Software Test Engineering, in STAG Software Private Ltd. He has over twenty years of experience in the software discipline and has worked in all the phases of software development life cycle out of which he has spent 13 years in the field of Software Test Engineering.
Prior to his association with STAG, he was the Engineering Project Manager in GE-GXS responsible for managing the Testing Team for different products.
He is passionate about driving process improvement for achieving better business results. He has delivered lectures on Software Engineering and Software Process Improvement at many places. He was certified internal auditor for ISO and part of internal assessment team for CMM model.
He holds an engineering degree in Mechanical discipline from Mysore University. He has completed a diploma in Statistical Quality Control (SQC) from ISI. He is also a Certified Software Quality Engineer (CSQE) from ASQ. His interests are in the areas of test design, project management, testing process improvement, and metrics and data analysis using statistical tools.
He had helped many organizations to install a disciplined test process and to improve the process over time. The model used by him in all consulting assignments is Test Maturity Model (TMM). This has helped organizations
- to commit acceptable goals to their customers and meet with little/no variations
- to reduce the defect escape rate significantly to their customers
- to sustain motivated test engineers in the system for longer duration