Holistic Defect Management 
Sudhir Pai & Upendra Wagh
Patni Computer Systems Inc.

Introduction:

Any organization limits the visibility of its defect management program to the span of the development life cycle which churns out applications. Our experience drove us to stretch defect management beyond the development cycle, after the application is transitioned to production. The analysis so done gave us interesting insights into the type of applications which have more defects in production and its probable causes.

This ultimately led us to have a critical look and subsequent enhancing of the defect management practices in the upper life cycle activities.

Learning Objectives:

• Control and in-sight into defect logging practices
• Better management reporting
• Implement-able new concepts
• Holistic view into defect logging and prevention

Outline:

• Problem statement
• Product-project scenario
• Factor influencing the defect management in such a scenario
• Product & project quadrants
• Metrics – Key to such an approach
• Defect Injection Rate (DIR) and interpretation
• Phase-wise defect report
• Benefits & Advantages
• Constraints

Biography:

Sudhir Pai is a Graduate in Mechanical engineering and Industrial engineering. He is also a Certified Software Quality Analyst (CSQA) and a Lead Assessor for ISO 9000:2000. He has over 8 years of experience in quality assurance. In software quality his area of expertise has been in implementing various models such as SW-CMM, ISO 9001 et al. Software metrics and training have been his passion. Back in India he has worked as Quality Analyst with CMMi Level 5 organizations such as Infosys Technologies and Patni. He is currently on an onsite assignment for defining and implementing metrics processes in one of largest insurance companies in US. Before this assignment Sudhir owned the metrics initiative at Patni and in this capacity, he also worked on a strategic initiative to improve the gross margin of the organization.

Upendra Wagh holds a Master's Degree in Engineering. In twelve years of his working experience he has performed various roles in the space of quality management systems. As a Consultant he helped design and implement quality management systems for various organizations. As a Grade I auditor for software industry with KPMG he has audited several Indian IT companies for their ISO 9001:2000 based quality management systems.

As a SEPG member of Patni's Quality and Delivery Innovation Group he led many organization-wide improvement initiatives such as changing the internal auditing process from project-based to client-based, piloting PSP and TSP and undertaking domain-specific certifications such as ISO 13485 for the medical devices group.

Currently he is on a consulting assignment with one of the largest insurance companies in US for defining and implementing Defect Management processes for one of their strategic solution center.

Sudhir and Upendra have also co-authored a paper on “Innovative In-flight Metrics for Development Projects” which was presented at the Annual International Quality Conference of Quality Assurance Institute, USA , in April 2007.