What Is Software Phase Containment/Escape?

What Is Phase Containment/Escape?

Phase containment in a nutshell is finding and removing bugs/defects early in the process of SDLC. It is the act of containing faults in one phase of software development before they escape and are found in subsequent phases.

An error is a fault that is introduced in the current phase of software development.

A defect is a fault that was introduced in prior phases of software development and discovered in subsequent phases.

You promote the concept of phase containment by relating this concept to the organization's costs and profitability. In order to do that you will need to identify the faults that escaped phase and were found in later phases. You will also need to determine the average costs of defects that escape and are found in subsequent phases.

As its proven from the collected data that most of the time spend in the software industry over the maintenance phase which is costly as it approximately takes 40 times as many engineering hours to fix them once they are out in the market.

There are many different activities, which we perform to make sure that we have a better control over the quality and these activities are: -

1. Static Analysis - Analyzing code for specific coding and formatting errors
2. Code Reviews – To make sure security and Better Accountability.
3. Unit Testing – Leveraging developer inside knowledge to break the code
4. Code Complete Criteria - Consistent standard handoff to Test team

There are phase containment metrics, which we can use to make sure that either we are on the track or is this process really working for our organization/company or not. These metrics are: -

1. Adoption Metric – It’s to make sure that whether we are adhering with the phase containment standards or not.
2. Effectiveness Metric – Its to make sure how we are doing & how well phase containment is working
3. Trailing Metric – It’s to find out the downstream impact of phase containment.
   

So we can say that through this process we can make sure to incorporate QA into all the phases of SDLC (Software Development Life Cycle). It is a shield for Defect Prevention. If QA team performs Requirements Review Design Review and Code Review defects would be few when actual application is tested. That means we have prevented many defects by performing reviews at each stage of SDLC. That ends up in a product/software on which team has more confidence, its easy to launch in the market with no issues hence improving customer satisfaction and demand in the industry/market.