Improving Your Processes: The New Reality Show

Tim Pelland

Wednesday, June 2, 2004

Networking @ 5:45; Business @ 6:45; Program @ 7:00 PM

Countrywide, 2900 Madera, Simi Valley, CA 93065

Everywhere you turn you see an onslaught of reality shows. While these shows may be fun to watch, we fail to look at our own companies and face our own reality of process management. We're constantly missing deadlines, exceeding budgets, and discovering defects after the application is moved into production. We are working 60-hour weeks and our departments' credibility within the organization is at an all-time low. What can we do? Our CIO says we will be SEI-CMM Level 2 compliant in two years. How can we do it? In today's economy, reality says we can't afford to do this. To accomplish this, we must define our current processes and measure the effectiveness of those processes to meet the new reality. For many companies, an effective process improvement program may be their only effective approach to improving productivity. Tim will give you some ideas to help you in meeting the new reality of defining those processes. The ideas you'll walk away with can be used simply as a means to improve overall performance or can be applied against any quality model in the world.

Tim Pelland is the Director of Technology at the Quality Assurance Institute. He has over 26 years in the telecommunications and computer industry with over 15 years as a trainer of various hardware and software products. Tim has also worked as a Web developer and tester of various Web based products. Tim has worked closely with the development of Interactive Voice Recognition (IVR) applications for various companies including Sprint and AT&T. Tim has worked in various capacities within the IT industry including being an A-plus certified PC technician, Certified Software Tester (CSTE), Certified Software Quality Analyst (CSQA), and a Certified Microsoft Office User Specialist. He also teaches the Boot Camp for Software Quality, Boot Camp for Software Testers, Effective Methods of Software Testing, Risk, Reviews during Software Development. He also teaches the entire line of on-line quality and testing courses through St. Petersburg College in Florida. In addition to his normal duties at QAI, he also teaches the various QAI seminars and programs, acts as a consultant on quality and testing matters, and presents at QAI conferences.