This blog series will be focusing on the Quality Assurance Centre of Excellence. Last week we covered the different concentrations of the QA CofE. This week we want to specifically focus on the proactive component.
Be Proactive – In this scenario the Quality Assurance CoE would be looking ahead and seeing what can be anticipated. They could be looking at coming projects; coming changes in organization direction; new technologies that might impact the organization; and the entire environment in which the organization operates in an effort to anticipate the impact on technology. Big data and security come immediately to mind for many organizations. There is almost no end to what could be considered.
So where do we start? The answer is we start with what we are currently doing in terms of projects, technology, and reacting to the environment. This is sometimes called Setting a Baseline although we may need something more general than that. We may also need to go into the past a little to get understand overall trends. While some things can change overnight, a lot of the major trends are obvious many years in advance; just not recognized at the time. We can use the quote from George Santayana here. Once we know where we have been and where we are now, then it is time to look at the competition to see where they may be ahead of us or where they appear to be going.
Now that we have all the information, we can start anticipating what might impact our organization.
- Is the environment going to change? If it is a government driven change, it is rarely a surprise and can be anticipated. We start to position ourselves to be ready for the change so it is a non-event for us when it occurs.
- Is technology going to change? YES – that’s inevitable. But, what impact will it have on my particular business and how fast will it happen are the more important, harder-to-answer questions. We need to look at our customers (How quickly do they start using new technology?); our own organization (What is the history of technology adoption?) and our competitors (Are they using technology to get ahead of us). We start to position our development and Quality Assurance groups to be ready for this new technology.
- What are the coming projects? This means that we need to be involved in the planning processes at the highest level. Only in that way can we anticipate what might be coming. We schedule incremental changes to ensure that the departments can tackle the new projects with a minimum of disruption
As was said: “It is difficult to make predictions, especially about the future.”
It is recommended that you put this on your daily reminder list: What is the potential impact of today’s discussions?
Next week Being Analytic