The one where you get asked about (Quality) Metrics

At Testcon Vilnius 2018, I was asked a few questions about Metrics. Metrics is always a thing that is depending on your context. All the Metrics that I used during the different work experiences where created by using the GQM-method. This stands for Goal, Question, Metric.

Goal: Metrics always should have a purpose, to make sure they have always ask yourself the following question first. What is the goal? What do I want to measure or of what information do we want to uncover?

Question: What are the questions that will help you to determine that you are on the right way to achieve this goal? What questions will give you relevant information and insights to change your approach. This can be multiple questions for one goal.

Metric: Now you come to the Metric part. Because the answers to those questions, they are in the metrics that you will use. The Metrics on focus on answering the questions. Multiple metrics might be needed to answer your question, but also one metric could answer multiple questions.

An example:

Goal: Within our company we invest in Test Automation to improve the quality & speed on which we deliver to our customers!

Questions:

1. Whats the quality of the provided delivery?
2. How much time is spent on deployments?

Metrics:

For question 1 the following metrics could apply: unit test coverage, bugs found by test, deployment build failure rate.

For question 2 the following metrics could apply: Amount of deployments per production release, deployment build failure rate, time spent on deployments;