How to Prepare Cross Functional Flowchart in MS Visio

This is pretty simple. Follow the steps written below and see the output attached:

1. Open MS Visio 2007 (whichever version you have)

2. Go to File > New > Flowchart > Cross Functional Flowchart

3. Drag and Drop Functional Bands from Cross Functional Flowchart Shape

4. Drag and Drop Separator, if required, in your diagram

5. Decide the flowchart logic on a pen and paper and replicate the same on Visio

6. Color the Fonts, Links, Lines etc to your choice

Visio Cross Functional Flowchart

See the attached document for your reference. You can generated better documents based on the complexity of the flow. I have illustrated with a simple business case - Recruitment Process in an organization.

A Generic Workflow Diagram

A generic workflow comprises of following three items:

i. Input
ii. Validation
iii. Process
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3 Attitudes of a Project Manager – Optimist, Pessimist and Realist

Project management is a complex role to play. The project manager does the requirements gathering, feasibility studies, planning, execution and risk mitigation. In the endeavor, the manager has three different takes – optimist, pessimist and realist. Well, how can the same person have three different attitudes? This is both exciting as well as challenging.

How to Answer Tough Interview Questions?

I posted this on http://www.lifeheed.com/ (http://www.lifeheed.com/article.php?article=35) earlier and thought it would be valuable for community who are following this blog.

If you are looking for a job change, be prepared for the interview process. Well, preparations may not always help. You may get surprise questions in the interview. You need to apply presence of mind, competence and communication capability to approach towards such questions. Let us first understand what sort of the questions are these and then we will take an approach to ace the interview.

Tips for a Résumé to Survive Screening

 
As the market has shown the signs of recovery, you must be looking forward to get a good job opportunity in testing. In the sea of résumés before the recruiter, your résumé really needs to stand out. Needless to say, that résumé can make or break your chances to get even first call.

Use these tips to boost your résumé's chance of survival in the initial scrutiny:

What is END and NED?

Simply put,

END = Evidence of no defect
NED = No evidence of defect

Test Cases for Triangles

We have studied the properties of various triangles in school. Let us apply those properties to test a triangle today.

A triangle is made of three sides (and three angles of course). Let us assume that the vertices are A, B and C, and corresponding sides are a, b, c.

Test cases follow:

1. Enter 0, a, b. No triangle is formed.
2. Enter 1, 2, 4. No triangle is formed because for a valid triangle a+b>c, b+c>a, c+a>b.
3. Enter angles A, B, C. The sum of the angles should be 180 degrees.
4. Enter a, a, a. Valid equilateral triangle.
5. Enter a, a, b. Valid isosceles triangle.
6. Enter angles A, B, C. If any of the angles is 90 degrees and the sum is 180 degrees, it is a right angle triangle.
7. Enter angles A, B, C as 90, 90, 0. The sum of angles is 180 degrees, still the triangle cannot be formed.
8. Enter negative value for a side, e.g. -1, -1, -1. Invalid input.
9. Enter character value for one of the sides, e.g. a, 2, 2. Invalid input.

Please add more to this.

Traceability Matrix: How to Map Requirements to Test Cases

Refer to following articles for more:

•  Traceability Matrix: How to Ensure the coverage of Requirements in Test Cases
•  FAQs about UAT (User Acceptance Testing)
•  Project Planning: How to Design the Project Flexibility Matrix
•  How to Develop a Software Change Management Process and Governance
•  How to Prepare Workflow Diagram and Systems

When you write test cases from a requirement document or use case document, you should remain sensitive towards the coverage of the requirement and converting them to testable items. The test cases are designed keeping in mind about the requirements coverage. If there are areas not covered in the test case, it will go untested. In order to verify whether all the requirements are being tested or not, Traceability Matrix is created. It maps requirements to the test cases.

How to Work in TDD Methodology of Software Development

Test Driven Development methodology of software development is one of the most popular flavor of agile methodology. Other popular flavors of agile are Scrum, Extreme Programing (XP), Function Driven development (FDD) etc. The main principle behing TDD is to write unit test cases first and then code the unit of the module so that the unit passes the test. TDD saves a lot of time and money in finding the sofwtare defects at the later stage of software development. Farther the testing cycle falls, higher would be the cost to fix the issue.

How to Conduct Performance Evaluation of Agile Team

Traditional performance measurements are successful with the traditional methodology of software development, where we stress more on individual contributions towards creating the software and reporting is made hierarchical in nature. In agile, the evaluation must also be adaptive, collaborative and frequent.

The traditional performance evaluations focus more on the individual performance and training needs. Whereas, in cross-functional team of agile evaluation of only individual performance would not be fair. So what stand should you take in such a case?