Software Solutions Partner

Emphasis on quality

We at Interconnect believe that “Quality” is of paramount importance for any commercial product or solution.

Delivering good quality work builds trust amongst clients and also imparts confidence to ourselves for taking on bigger challenges resulting in the growth of the company.

Interconnect has designed a process driven quality program which not only concentrates on delivering good quality work for the projects taken up but also enables the sustenance and improvement of our quality standards.

The Interconnect process

We believe that consistent quality results can be achieved only if the organization is “process” driven.

Therefore, we have designed a standard process which needs to be followed by our development group for each project/product. A process audit is carried out by the quality department, and any deviations from the standard process are reported.

We keep enhancing our process depending upon the suggestions of our defect prevention board, and the feedback from the development group.

Following is the snapshot of our standard software development process:

Related Document	Interconnect Software Development Life Cycle
Requirement Specifications	Step 1: Requirement Analysis: This is perhaps the most important step in the entire cycle. If the requirements are understood well and documented clearly, then the implementation becomes much smoother and less amount of re-work is required in the software.
Functional Specifications	Step 2: Functional Documentation: After the requirements are known, we make “Functional Specifications” which mainly consists of specifications of the user interface and the reports. These are given to the client, to give him the knowledge of how the system would function to meet his requirements. The comments of the client are addressed and then this document forms the basis of Software Design.
Design Specifications	Step 3: Software Design: Once the functionality is frozen, the software is then designed to implement the same. A design specifications document is created which describes the overall software architecture and the components included in the same. The Design Specification also divides the system into smaller components (modules) which we can be treated as individual units.
Program Specifications	Step 4: Module Specifications: After the Design is finalized, program specifications are prepared for each independent unit identified in the Design. The development of modules is carried out on basis of these program specifications.
	Step 5: Unit Development: Each module is developed on the basis of program specifications. The software developed is reviewed by peer as well as by SQA.
Unit Test Plan	Step 6: Unit Testing Each unit developed is then tested independently. Stubs are used wherever there is integration required with other units. The unit is first tested by the developer, and then an Independent unit testing is carried out to flush out unit level errors.
	Step 7: System Integration Once all the units are developed, the system is then integrated together by the integration team.
System Test Plan	Step 8: Integration Testing This is the last step before the software is released to the user. The integrated system is tested on basis of system integration test plan to see whether it meets all the requirements of the system. The integration testing is first carried out by development group and then carried out by the SQA. The system is released only when it gets satisfactory quality rating by the SQA.
UAT plan	Step 9: User Acceptance Test Once the software is released, a user acceptance test is carried out in the production environment. The system is put into production when the user is satisfied with the results of user acceptance test.

Quality Initiatives

Interconnect has taken numerous initiatives for constant improvement in our quality standards. Here are few important ones:

1. Establishment of Defect Prevention Board:

“Learn from your mistakes” is an age old saying. We have tried to implement this in true spirit in our company. For each project/product that we release, the results of all the testing carried out during development and post release (at the user end)
are recorded and are analyzed by our defect prevention board.

The committee does “root cause analysis” for each defect found and gives suggestions regarding changes in the software development process to prevent such defects from occurring in future.

Depending upon the suggestions given by the defect prevention board, our process design group keeps improving the process to enable us to achieve better quality in future.

2. Software Rating Process:

“Quality” is not always tangible. We have adopted a function point analysis system to quantify the testing results and rate our products/solutions for their quality.

This helps us to record levels of quality produced by our development team and get the trend of improvement in the same. This also acts as a motivational factor for our development group to keep producing better results all the time.

3. Creation of Software Components Repository:

Today, we being in a fast moving world, all the IT solutions are required in a very short time. To achieve good quality solution, in a short space of time, we have built a rich components repository; which is a collection of tested and proven components for achieving standard functionality.

We have built documentation regarding the effective use of such components which are shared with our development group and this enables them to deliver quick solutions without compromising on the quality standards.

4. Creation of tools and frameworks:

To prevent human errors in repetitive tasks, and to reduce the development time, Interconnect has designed its own framework for generation of software.

This framework enables us to complete the repetitive tasks quickly and reduces the testing effort for those modules.

Thus, the use of standard components, and the software generation by framework, leaves a very small portion of the software to be developed for each project, which helps to produce faster and better quality solutions each time.