Q.A. Tips

Reams and reams have been written about quality assurance. Here, a quick and dirty set of techniques, is described to get the basics of quality assurance in place.

A software project can be quickly (and broadly) divided into different sections, they are:

• Textual menus
• Toolbar menus
• Master data entry screens
• Master/Detail data entry screens
• Report generation data capture screens
• The actual system generated reports

Each of these sections has to be assigned to a programmer with explicit directions, explained in writing (often called programmers documentation) on how the section must be coded.

Each section (i.e. Menus, Master Data entry screens, Master / Detail data entry screens, Report parameter screens and finally report formats) must have a set of standards defined so that across the application all Master data entry screens look, feel and behave the same. The same goes for each of the other sections described above as well.

To achieve the same look, feel and behavior of Master data entry screens a set of standards that the programmers must adhere to needs to be defined. The standards defined will determine the aesthetics of each Master data entry screen (i.e. its look and feel) and the code base (i.e. its behaviour) that lies below the Master data entry screen.

Examples Of Aesthetic Standards:

• All labels will have their text right aligned
• All Label text will be immediately followed by a colon
• The Font used will be Times New Roman
• The Font size will be 8 pt
• The Font weight will be bold
• The Primary Key on the data entry form will have Dark Blue as the font color
• Text boxes when placed one below the other will have left edges aligned
• Text boxes when placed adjacent to each other will have centers aligned
• Each Text box font will be Sans Serif, Size will be 8 pt, weight will be normal

I've provided a link to a file that contains aesthetic standards at the bottom of this page. Both .doc and .pdf formats are available. Feel free to download it if you think it will be of use to you. Give me some feedback if you feel strongly about anything. Better yet send me your experiences and jottings. I'll incorporate them into my downloads if you will give me permission to do so.