The Practical Guide to Defect Prevention

I had a chance to read this book thanks to lots of snow here in the Mid-Atlantic region. It is easy to read, with good examples. There were some very useful graphics and charts throughout the book. Chapter 3 on economics was good, but could have been better, and I wish there were more case studies to relate to improvements in process. Overall though it is a very balanced apporach to quality software and defect prevention. So many other publications tend to over stress back end testing, and automated testing tools. I do wish there were a bit more on practical guides to developing testing strategies in differnet SDLC methods, and in balancing requirements and test scripting. The chapter on a quality culture is not very practical and seems not to tie back to the economics chapter as well as I would have hoped. Overall though I thought this was a very useful book and well worth the purchase price.

This book gives a comprehensive vision of defect prevention. It is truly practical to build a defect preventive organization. Defect and root cause taxonomies are particularly interesting

"The Practical Guide to Defect Prevention" was written for software developers and testers, but many techniques presented can be applied to improve quality in other products as well. I'm in the midst of a career change into software development after 2 decades of working with office automation hardware, and have referred to this book during a current project, as well as passed along suggestions straight from this book to former colleagues in a much different career field. When I saw the title of this book, I was afraid I'd be reading advice that wasn't much more than common sense, or a rehash of material learned in programming or intro software testing. Wrong! Realizing how naïve I was, I picked up 2 other texts in the field of defect prevention and root cause analysis. I found this book to be more readable. The clear taxonomy, the complete explanations of various methods (with multiple examples and references) and the humor (!) held my interest enough to where I learned and understood the techniques presented, as well as broadened my understanding of what quality software development really entails. As a previous reviewer pointed out, this book is useful to everyone from the tester who wants to catch errors, through the executive wanting a successful business. And, I suppose this sounds like I'm laying it on with a trowel, but I have to say it: Although I'm a voracious reader, I keep only a few dozen books on my shelves at home; this is one of them, and I suspect that I'll continue referring to it for quite some time. Thanks to the authors Ross, Marc, Bob, Dan, David, Lori, and Josh for taking the time and putting forth such a great effort!

This is the first review I have performed and here it goes... I work in software development and have for the last 11 years. As a Quality Assurance Professional, I think "The Practical Guide to Defect Prevention" should be on everyone's book shelf. Everyone in the industry or those contemplating a start-up in the industry should read this book to get an understanding of what quality means and how to achieve it. This is a fun book filled with real world experiences and enough technical knowledge to implement the many quality systems and is most beneficial read from end to end, but is also designed to be a reference. "The Practical Guide to Defect Prevention" does a great job of giving a strong foundation for those wanting to develop quality in their processes. Who can really benefit from this book? * The executive wanting to know what it takes to have a successful software business * The manager wanting to know how to improve the product * The product designer who wants to provide enhancements to existing features and determine what features to add * The developer wanting to gauge the effectiveness of the implementation * The tester that wants to catch all of the errors Sure, we could talk about all the content and implementation issues, including; Root Cause Analysis, Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA), Fault Tree Analysis (FTA) or Failure Modeling, but my favorite aspect of this book is the real world examples and pitfalls described. Many great related quotes are included to illustrate some aspect of the material to be presented. My favorite was in chapter 12, "Adapting Processes" where there was a quote from Mark Twain "A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way". This quote illustrates the reason you need to read this book and keep it on your bookshelf. Arne The Practical Guide to Defect Prevention (Best Practices)