New Product Development Interview Preparation Guide

Waterfall model is a sequential software development
process,in which progress is seen as flowing steadily
downwards(like waterfall) through the phases of
conception,initiation,analysis,design,construction,testing
and maintenance. Hence these model named as waterfall.

A defect that is confirmed by the team to be a bug but the effort to correct it at this time exceeds the ROI (Return On Investment). This can often be the case when a re-design is scheduled for that area of the application or if technology barriers exist that make correction of the bug prohibative.

Continuous integration:
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First core functionality implemented. Then new requirements
are added to that implemented part and checking whether it
is giving some meaningful functionality and then again some
requirements are added. This process continues until the
system is fully developed.

Advantage: Client gets small working system very early.

Iterative: Total opposite to the above.
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Disadvantage : Client has to wait a long for his/her desired
system

GET method is mainly used when the client requests are made
to the server. This is like a query made to the server.

POST method is used to submit a set of data to the server.

The waterfall model seems an ideal choice here. No other
model seems a reasonable alternative to accept as a
different answer.
Strengths:
1. The company is large and bureaucratic, requiring
documentation and good
project visibility. Waterfall documentation satisfies this.
2. The company has a high staff turnover. So probably many
employees are
new and inexperienced. Waterfall works well with
inexperienced staff.
3. The application type is well known to the company, so a
thorough user
requirements analysis should be possible early on.
4. An existing application is to be re-engineered. This also
confirms that the
user requirements are known early. They could be extracted
from the existing application.
5. The company will maintain the software, so good
documentation will be essential.
6. The company has a good reputation to maintain in this
area, so quality control will be essential. Waterfall
emphasis of requirements-before-design and
design-before-coding will emphasise quality.
Weaknesses:
Waterfall has no obvious weaknesses on this project.
1. We may end up swimming upstream, but the chances seem
minimal since the requirements should be clear from the start.
2. Late arrival of code may be one, but on the other hand
our client may be able to continue using the existing
application until the new system arrives.

Solution 1 (b) : Functional and Non-Functional requirements
Interface Requirement, This section defines the parameters
that the software product must follow while interacting with
the outside world.
User Interfaces :
1. Login Screen
2. Menu selection Screen
3.Employee Salary Details
4.Employee Loan Details
5.Employee Leave Details
6.Employee Tax Details
7.Generate Salary Slip
8.Employee Bank Details
Hardware Interfaces Server Configuration: Minimum 2GB Hard
Disk P-III processor or equivalent Ram 512 MB Windows with
Apache preloaded.Client Configuration: A terminal with
Internet Explorer and Printer.
Software Interfaces Operating system –
WindowsXP/2000Language -- JSPDatabase –
OracleNetwork -- LAN Communications Interfaces
Communications interfaces can be provided through email,web
browser, network server communications protocols, electronic
forms, and so on. For this we can use communication
standards such as FTP or HTTP to provide security using
encryption algorithms and synchronization mechanisms
Functional Requirements:
This section analyzes various angles of the functionality to
be developed. You do not need to use each type of analysis
for the entire system. Select only those analyses that best
allow you to complete your understanding of the
requirements. Feature Analysis The Automated Payroll
Processing system consists of following modules.Admin : In
this module admin is provided with many services such as
assigning roles, Add new employee, Update Salary Details,
Update Loan Details, Update Leave Details, Update Tax
Details, Generate Salary Slip, View employee
account.Employee: In this module employee is provided with
the services such as Update personal profile, Change
Password, View earnings, View Deductions, View Salary Slip.
Nonfunctional Requirements:
Performance Requirements System can withstand even though
many number of users requested the desired service. As we
are keeping office level server of the automated payroll
system. And access is given to the only registered users of
office who requires the services of viewing, Updating etc.
It can withstand the load Safety & Reliability Requirements
By incorporating a robust and proven SQL into the system,
reliable performance and integrity of data is ensured. There
must be a power backup for server system.
Security Requirements
Sensitive data is protected from unwanted access by users
appropriate technology and implementing strict user- access
criteria. Software Quality Attributes Menu-driven programs
with user friendly interface with simply hyper links. It is
very easy to use. Backup mechanisms are considered for
maintainability of software as well as database. As it is
object oriented reusability exists. As project is based on
MVC architecture, testability exists.

Test Strategy for Middleware and Firmware

We have defined middleware and firmware and understand that
they are different, yet have many characteristics in common
when it comes to testing. The discussion of test strategy
for these types of software will include both middleware
and firmware, and can be extended to test any software
which is not accessed by a user interface.

Early Testing

Early testing will multiply the testing effectiveness of
any software application, regardless of technology.
However, in the world of middleware and firmware early
testing is most critical because finding defects at later
stages carries a higher penalty of rework. This is due to
the extent of integration with hardware and other software.

The problem with early testing in this environment is that
with so many integration dependencies, how does someone
create test harnesses and stubs that allow for an accurate
test? Manually, the job is possible, but can be
overwhelming when there are many interfaces involved. If
you are developing in a language that has tool support for
structural test case design and testing, you may find that
the job can be very easy. Specifically, for C++ and Java,
Parasoft (www.parasoft.com) has a great toolset to design
and perform structural tests, with a feature to
automatically create a test harness and test stubs. Similar
tools are available from International Software Automation
(ISA) www.softwareautomation.com.

Developer Testing

Developer testing is essential to avoid high rework costs.
To the testers, the software is a black box. Only the
developers have the view and access to the code to test all
conditions. In addition, not only are functional cases at
stake, but also the structural tests for memory boundary
violations and memory leaks.

My experience is that developers can test software if the
have a good process to follow, standards to show what is
expected of them in terms of testing, and a way to hold
developers accountable for the quality of their work.
Management must also be making the message loud and clear
that testing is part of the job and that quality is a
shared responsibility between developers, testers, QA, and
management.

An Object-oriented View of Testing

In the object-oriented view of testing, tests are isolated
at a smaller scope, yet can have high complexity due to the
interfaces with other objects. The object-oriented view of
testing must be able to deal with classes, methods, and
attributes and to validate those at a high level of
coverage.

In Shel Siegel's book, "Object-Oriented Software Testing,"
he describes the Hierarchical approach to O-O testing.

"The hierarchical approach is at the heart of the object-
oriented testing system. This test approach uses and builds
upon several well-understood testing techniques, tying them
together into a comprehensive testing system. The
hierarchical approach leverages the fact that "everything
is a system." It defines and applies testing standards for
several levels of software component: objects, classes,
foundation components, and systems. The hierarchical
approach designates as SAFE those components that meet the
testing standards for that kind of component. Once you
designate a component as SAFE, you can integrate it with
other SAFE components to produce the next-level component.
In turn, you test this component to the level of safety
associated with the component level it represents. SAFE is
always a relative state. It depends entirely on the
standards you choose to enforce, your application, your
attitude toward risk, and the specific risks and risk
management practices you adopt in your project. The
hierarchical approach provides guidelines for minimum
safety; you decide what is right for you."

A quality management system in accordance with ISO 9001:2000
will provide your organization with a set of processes that
ensure a common sense approach to the management of your
organization.

The system should ensure consistency and improvement of
working practices, which in turn should provide products and
services that meet customer's requirements. ISO 9000 is the
most commonly used international standard that provides a
framework for an effective quality management system.

The difference is that the CMM is a way to communicate
capabilities, and ISO is a way to communicate the process.
They are not necessarily incompatible.

The Capability Maturity Model is a very specific way of
classifying an organization's software development methods.
In a certain way, it tells how the quality of its software
designs is likely to be repeated.

ISO-9000 procedures describe a (possibly) definite
developemtn process but gives no indication of the likely
quality of the designs or whether multiple software efforts
are likely to produce software of similar quality.

Beta test & Alpha tests are type of Acceptance Testing.Beta
testing is performed at the client's site in the absence of
the development team.Whereas alpha testing is performed at
the developor's site.

A spelling mistake in the user interface text may have low
severity and high priority.
For example the question given here itself, the spelling mistake
existing here for 'severity' string will be understood by
many users,so it has low severity, with not impacting what the
user wants to ask here, but have high priority to correct the
same to be
more clear and clarity to the user.