ASQ Software Division Region 1 Report for 2Q2007
by Peter Schulz

The Software Quality Group of New England (SQGNE) is in its 13th season, sponsored by the ASQ Software Division and Sun Microsystems.  Meetings are held monthly, typically on the second Wednesday, from September through July at Sun Microsystems in Burlington Massachusetts.  Topics cover concepts and techniques related to software quality engineering and the software engineering process. This past January, Robin Goldsmith of GoPro Management, presented “Proactive Testing Puts Agile Test-Driven (and Other) Development on Steroids”.  Robin used a case from participants in a Proactive Testing seminar, to show a sample of agile low-overhead Proactive Testing techniques that revealed many important test conditions, including major causes of show stoppers, that developers, users, and even professional testers typically miss.  Due to an untimely “Nor’easter”, the February meeting was postponed…but well worth the delay. Howie Dow presented “Project Retrospectives, a Different Look”, where he focused on a different method of performing a retrospective or post project assessment. Howie’s approach takes typically less than one-half day, therefore suitable for projects where the investment of a two day retrospective may not be appropriate. In March, Norman Daoust of Daoust Associates, discussed “Why Use Case Models are Your Friends”.  The session was an overview of use case modeling for the software quality assurance and testing community, which gave an understanding of how use case models can assist the quality assurance and testing process.  For the April Meeting, Derek Kozokowski of SAP is scheduled to present “Software Test Cases: Who, What, Where, When, How, and Why” . The upcoming schedule and past presentations are posted on the website, which is: http://www.swqual.com/SQGNE/main.html .SQGNE also maintains a listing of area jobs at: http://www.swquality.com/users/pustaver/jobs/

The Boston Software Process Improvement Network (SPIN) typically meets on the third Tuesday of the month, from September through June, at Mitre in Burlington,  Massachusetts.  In January, Johanna Rothman discussed excerpts from her book “Behind Closed Doors – the Secrets of Great Management”.  As always, Johanna mixed her advice with anecdotal stories from her career.  In February, Robin Goldsmith presented “Avoid Creep-Discover the REAL requirements”, where he discussed techniques from his book “Discovering REAL Business Requirements for Software Project Success”.  In March SPIN and ASQ Boston had their annual combined dinner meeting at the Hilton Garden Inn in Waltham, MA. Naomi Karten discussed that despite delivering software to specification on time and within budget does not guarantee happy customers with.  “Tales of Whoa and the Psychology of Customer Satisfaction”. In April, Ed Yourdon will speak about “The Internet’s Next Wave: Web 2.0”.

This SPIN also sponsors working “roundtable” sessions prior to the speaker at the monthly meetings. Roundtables are focused group or "birds-of-a-feather" discussions, with a Facilitator to stimulate and moderate discussion. For the upcoming April meeting, there will be two roundtables:  “Improving Decisions with "Lessons Learned"”, facilitated by Alice Brown Sr. SQE Engineer, Haemonetics, Inc; and  "Implementing PMPal as a tool for managing and reporting metrics”, facilitated by Murali Chemuturi of Chemuturi Consulting.

The full calendar, newsletter, past presentations, and job postings can be found at http://www.boston-spin.org/index.html.

ASQ Boston sponsored “Provably-Correct Software: Using "Coverage" And Other Techniques To Improve Application Quality” by Richard Jacik at Mitre in McLean VA, and broadcast to Mitre-Burlington Ma and Mitre-Eatontown, NJ after a networking and pizza dinner session.

The Annual BOSCON Conference http://www.asqboston.org/BOSCON/boscon.htm will be held Thursday May 17 at Merrimack College in North Andover, MA. The theme for BOSCON 2007 is “A New World of Quality -“Achieving Corporate Goals Through Innovative Collaboration”…the full program is available here: http://www.asqboston.org/BOSCON/boscon_program.htm.