Just had a thought how to improve the quality of the product in any software development effort. I thought of three most obvious, simple and feasable things. Quality of software boils down to the code and three things that any software house should to be doing. Probably more steps can be undertaken but here’s my list:
1. Create complete testing plan (end to end). This needs to be a suite of test cases. Developers usually estimate a most basic set of tests should take 1 man days. Complete regression tests would need to be done with each major change.
2. Map out the whole architecture and the database. Write down any standards as you do reviews. That should take few days. Print posters of how that looks like and update as we progress with futher features/changes.
3. Post fewer concurrent changes against staging/live environments. Many changes can be done at the same time but fewer posted against test environment to isolate problems and impact of one change on functionality on other.