Testing at Ad Hoc Level Organizations

Ad hoc means unstructured, inconsistent levels of performance. If any company is at the ad hoc level, tasks are not performed the same way by different people or different groups. For example, one system development group may use part of the system development methodology, but improvise other parts; another group may select different parts of the same system development methodology to use, and decide not to perform tasks done by a previous group.
At this level, management manages people and jobs. Management will establish goals or objectives for individuals and teams, and manage to those objectives and goals with minimal concern about the means used to achieve the goals. This level is normally heavily schedule driven, and those that meet the schedules are rewarded. Since there are not any standards against which to measure deliverables, people’s performance is often dependent upon their ability to convince management that the job they have done is excellent. This causes the environment to be very political. Both management and staff become more concerned with their personal agenda than with meeting their organization’s mission.
In such case, emphasis needs to be on discipline and control. The emphasis should be on getting the work processes defined, training the people in the work processes, implementing sufficient controls to assure compliance to the work processes, and producing products that meet predefined standards.

Software testers face a much greater challenge testing software developed by low maturity level, than they do by testing software developed by higher maturity levels. At low maturity level, testing and rework will consume more than 50% of the total software development effort. As software development processes mature, two things happen: more testing occurs during the building of software and the amount of testing required is reduced.