Root Canal Surgery

Getting to the root of your quality problem and changing the culture around software issues in your organization.

No one likes going to a root canal surgery at a dentist, but sometimes it is necessary. Trying to delve into the real root cause of issues can be similarly painful, but necessary to solving a lot of current and future quality issues. Software testing is more than finding defects. It's mitigating them and preventing them from occurring again. The only way we can successfully mitigate and prevent certain issues from reoccurring in our products is to understand the root of why they occur. And often the results are beyond just technical flaws and can represent the culture your company has towards testing and quality in the first place. In this talk, I discuss the importance of discovering the real root cause of an issue, how you can implement processes to simplify the issue and why you need to make these processes a part of your software development process. The topics I plan to cover in this talk include: Why you need to get to the root of the problem? Secrets to identifying the real root cause of complex issues Strategies for successful RCA triage Adequate mitigations for effort Classifying root causes effectively How reporting on RCA will lead to better decisions