Many of you have commented on the importance of product quality, performance, and usability. One of the ongoing actions is a monthly product review, involving Software Development, Product Management and Technical Support.  During that meeting, the three teams review your feedback, the types and number of incoming Support calls, and how future plans will address our Customers' needs.  Please note that some of the product improvements will take time to be addressed due to product release schedules, so we ask for your patience during the development process.

Actions Taken

New quality management system under development

Pitney Bowes Worldwide Engineering (WWE) has a customer-focused Quality Management System (QMS) and Quality Manual. To guide the development of our QMS, we are applying the ISO/IEC 90003:2004 guidelines for the application of ISO/IEC 9001:2000 to computer software development.

  • Management commitment to our QMS is stated in our Quality Policy, which has been endorsed by executive leaders from Worldwide Engineering, Global Technical Support, and Global Product Management teams. Compliance with quality policies is reviewed regularly through internal and external audits. The progress and health of high-priority projects is reported in biweekly meetings between project leaders, product managers, and the executive leadership of WWE.
  • In addition to regular monitoring and reporting, quality performance is monitored through the use of key performance indicators. The indicators and metrics are reported monthly to executive leaders of Engineering.

All Engineering groups merged under central leadership team, allows for more efficient operations and control of quality

  • There are status meetings for key projects on a weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly basis depending on the nature of the project. These meetings facilitate direct communication between the VP of Global Engineering, her staff, and members of the development and product management team for a release.
  • New WW Engineering project management office plans and coordinates all release activity for all Engineering projects globally.
  • All new products and projects must pass business, architectural, and technical reviews before inception.

Implementing Agile methodology across WW Engineering: ongoing, high adoption rate throughout WW Engineering

  • All software product changes are tested throughout their lifecycle, through the structured agile methodology, Scrum. Each Scrum team works in small increments which are tested throughout their development. Quality Assurance Engineers test and review every change once it has been completed.
  • Testing is performed on different database platforms, devices and environments depending on the nature of the change and all testing is subject to risk based review by experienced QA Engineers.
  • Additional regression testing is performed on the product at key points. This can be after a number of small increments or before a major release. Automated regression tests are also developed in order to increase the frequency and coverage of this testing.
  • Many new quality-related gates introduced, including gates at the product design, development team iteration, and release points.

Overall Product Quality

We are continuing to invest and improve in product quality across all lines of our business and are using Coverity software quality assurance processes (see below) to ensure you receive superior quality releases.

Coverity Quality Assurance Standards

Coverity, the leader in software integrity, is the trusted quality assurance standard for companies that have a zero tolerance policy for software failures, problems, and security breaches.  Pitney Bowes Software has deployed Coverity source code analysis tools and quality assurance processes as part of our product development cycle, resulting in two distinct forms: "Coverity Prevent" and "Coverity Clean".

"Coverity Prevent" is a process that is applied across all source code daily, identifying any new potential issues to software as changes are made. This process helps our engineers limit the number of such issues by identifying and resolving them quickly and even before they are noticed by our testing teams.

"Coverity Clean" is an extension to the "Coverity Prevent" process only reached when a team has resolved all new and pre-existing issues identified by Coverity.

With this process Pitney Bowes Software has resolved several thousand lines of code across our Customer Communications Management (CCM), Customer Data and Location Intelligence (CDLI), and Customer Analytics and Interaction (CAI) product lines.

Products undergoing the "Coverity Prevent" stage include:

  • CCM - Doc1, eMessaging, Streamweaver
  • CDLI - Discover, Engage 3D, GeoStan, MapInfo Professional & Sagent Dataflow

Products that have gone on to reach "Coverity Clean" include:

  • CDLI - Confirm Gold, Confirm Mobile
  • CCM - Finalist, Mail360, VeriMove
  • CAI - Prospect Finding Service (formerly Targeting Console)