- Today’s rapidly scaling and increasingly complex products create mounting pressure on delivery teams to release new systems and changes quickly and with sufficient quality.
- Many organizations lack the critical capabilities and resources needed to satisfy their growing testing backlog, risking product success.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
- Testing is often viewed as a support capability rather than an enabler of business growth. It receives focus and investment only when it becomes a visible problem.
- The rise in security risks, aggressive performance standards, constantly evolving priorities, and misunderstood quality policies further complicate QA as it drives higher expectations for effective practices.
- QA starts with good requirements. Tests are only as valuable as the requirements they are validating and verifying. Early QA improves the accuracy of downstream tests and reduces costs of fixing defects late in delivery.
- Quality is an organization-wide accountability. Upstream work can have extensive ramifications if all roles are not accountable for the decisions they make.
- Quality must account for both business and technical requirements. Valuable change delivery is cemented in a clear understanding of quality from both business and IT perspectives.
Impact and Result
- Standardize your definition of a product. Come to an organizational agreement of what attributes define a high-quality product. Accommodate both business and IT perspectives in your definition.
- Clarify the role of QA throughout your delivery pipeline. Indicate where and how QA is involved throughout product delivery. Instill quality-first thinking in each stage of your pipeline to catch defects and issues early.
- Structure your test design, planning, execution, and communication practices to better support your quality definition and business and IT environments and priorities. Adopt QA good practices to ensure your tests satisfy your criteria for a high-quality and successful product.
Build a Software Quality Assurance Program Research & Tools
Start here – read the Executive Brief
Read our concise Executive Brief to find out why you should build a strong foundation for quality, review Info-Tech’s methodology, and understand the four ways we can support you in completing this project.Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:
- Build a Software Quality Assurance Program – Phases 1-2
1. Define your QA process
Standardize your product quality definition and your QA roles, processes, and guidelines according to your business and IT priorities.
- Build a Strong Foundation for Quality – Phase 1: Define Your QA Process
- Test Strategy Template
2. Adopt QA good practices
Build a solid set of good practices to define your defect tolerances, recognize the appropriate test coverage, and communicate your test results.
- Build a Strong Foundation for Quality – Phase 2: Adopt QA Good Practices
- Test Plan Template
- Test Case Template
Workshop: Build a Software Quality Assurance Program
Workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.
1 Define Your QA Process
The Purpose
Discuss your quality definition and how quality is interpreted from both business and IT perspectives.
Review your case for strengthening your QA practice.
Review the standardization of QA roles, processes, and guidelines in your organization.
Key Benefits Achieved
Grounded understanding of quality that is accepted across IT and between the business and IT.
Clear QA roles and responsibilities.
A repeatable QA process that is applicable across the delivery pipeline.
Activities
1.1 List your QA objectives and metrics.
1.2 Adopt your foundational QA process.
Outputs
Quality definition and QA objectives and metrics.
QA guiding principles, process, and roles and responsibilities.
2 Adopt QA Good Practices
The Purpose
Discuss the practices to reveal the sufficient degree of test coverage to meet your acceptance criteria, defect tolerance, and quality definition.
Review the technologies and tools to support the execution and reporting of your tests.
Key Benefits Achieved
QA practices aligned to industry good practices supporting your quality definition.
Defect tolerance and acceptance criteria defined against stakeholder priorities.
Identification of test scenarios to meet test coverage expectations.
Activities
2.1 Define your defect tolerance.
2.2 Model and prioritize your tests.
2.3 Develop and execute your QA activities.
2.4 Communicate your QA activities.
Outputs
Defect tolerance levels and courses of action.
List of test cases and scenarios that meet test coverage expectations.
Defined test types, environment and data requirements, and testing toolchain.
Test dashboard and communication flow.