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What does an Organization “Buying Quality” really want?

A couple of weeks ago we listed all the items we were doing that constituted Quality Initiatives.  The comment was that they were all over the place in terms of what was required to implement Quality at any particular organization.  So each organization is ‘buying’ something different.

Subsequently we had a conversation with someone who promotes Project Management conferences and he suggested that there would be a substantial training component to get people in his industry to  understand Quality.  He made this comment based on our discussions without even seeing the list of items we were working on at the time.

Stay tuned for the next few blogs (in between the ones advertising TASSQ and KWSQA Meetings) to see some explanations of Quality Assurance for a variety of organizations.

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What does an Organisation “Buying Quality” really want?

As mentioned in our newsletter, we have several initiatives under way to enhance the Quality Assurance in a number of organisations. If you reviewed the list, you will note that they are all over the place in terms of what they expect.

1. One is doing traditional Process Improvement.
2. Another wants to improve their Quality Management, enhance their Processes (QA) and still complete testing (QC) on all their projects. As you can well imagine, this one has several competing stakeholders.
3. A third one wants to improve their Requirements Management, testing is not considered.
4. One wants to record the results of their tests but is quite satisfied with their processes as they currently exist.
5. The last one wants complementary QA training to support their processes (which are currently changing!)

Suffice to say that these are all under a Quality Initiative.

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It is interesting how test tools seem to move through cycles.  We mentioned in a previous post how many test tools were listing AI as their differentiator.  This year we seem to have encountered two different items:

Codeless – several test tools that have come to our attention recently are claiming to be codeless.  Either they are driven by capture of the transactions and generate a script from that capture or they use keywords to create a script.  Either way they seem to have removed the need to work at the scripting level.

Driven by a design – in a somewhat similar fashion they use a design or a diagram to drive the scripts and conceal the actual scripting again.

We have asked a few questions about these tools (the same ones that no doubt occurred to you)

1. How can they be modified (especially when dealing with changing requirements in a fluid project)?
2. How can they be maintained across several releases so that the investment is repaid (positive ROI)?
3. How can they be controlled (for those clients who need an auditable trail)?  Some of our clients would not be happy with just the actual scripts landing in a controlled repository. They would also want the script design keywords or diagram to be controlled as well.  This way they have the whole story.

We have received varying answers to these questions.  Some seem prepared, others do not.

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Another Quality Initiatives is also getting going and we want to discuss this one this week.

This one revolves around dealing with endlessly changing client requirements.  You always want to fulfill the client requirements but you also need to make sure that you are not losing money if they change their mind too often.  The old solution was based on trust and worked 90% of the time with no issues.  If the client had changes, they communicated them and agreed to any changes in price as a result.  The problems started when the changes impacted other requirements and no one had taken the time to thoroughly analyze the impact.  If it was identified early enough there was time to correct the problem.  However, if there were far reaching changes and impacts, the cost got quite high.  An organised system with dependencies and impacts measured was proposed.  In addition an audit trail was included so that any changes were tracked and could be reversed if necessary.  Quality processes were applied.  We are still working through the implementation.

Test Leader or Manager with concerns? Consider the Test Managers Conference.
NVP Quality Assurance Services
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Book a Meeting with NVP
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Photo by Chandan Chaurasia on Unsplash

It has been an interesting start to the year. After a couple of weeks while people caught up on their email and considered how the year was starting, this week saw a rush of items starting up. There are too almost too many seminars to attend. The Quality Initiatives are also getting going and we want to discuss one of them.

We assessed an organization for its maturity level. Some parts were good and some needed work which is about what was expected. Covid-19 delayed some of the progress in addressing the issues simply because we could not get together to discuss the resolution to the issues. It is not bad to do it remotely but it is not as good; too many gaps.

However, the interesting part is that we have now reached the point where other groups (beyond QA) will be impacted. This means a whole sales and deployment process and pushing back against the resistance from people who see no benefit to them. Suffice to say, this will be interesting in the absence of personal contact and the ability to address the issues immediately.

If you have input, please contact us.

Test Leader or Manager with problems? Consider the Test Managers Conference.

Photo by Chandan Chaurasia on Unsplash