Category: Organisations

Infection rates are down.  Businesses are opening up.  And now there is a backlog of IT projects that were put on hold when things closed down in a hurry.  Some continued on at a slower rate while the lockdown occurred, others came to complete halt, and a limited number were launched while the lockdown was in progress.  We have all three types of projects in the portfolio

Unless you were working on a single project, and continued to work on a single project, you are now juggling multiple items with different schedules, priorities, and work loads.  In other word, business as usual.  Some of the projects may even be delayed until the next fiscal period since they did not finish inside the mandated time lines.  

So what is the Quality Assurance response:

1.  Slower rate projects – nothing has changed except that it will now be longer before implementation.  Unless your memory (and everyone else’s memory) is really good you will need to document what was completed, stretch the schedule and make sure that nothing is forgotten.  If the end date has not changed, it will be very easy to let Quality Assurance slide or get missed in the compressed schedule.
2. Projects that came to halt.  Hopefully you had time to put together some documentation before everything was lost.  If so, you can pick up where you left off.  If not, you are starting from the beginning with a potentially squeezed schedule.  Documentation has its uses!
3. Projects that launched in the pandemic started with the assumption of being unable to see people so they will run with or without in-person meetings.  This is a regular project.

If you see yourself above, use the link below to get in touch.

Give us a call to continue the discussion. We have supplied Assessment, Coaching, Consulting Management and Training to Financial, Telecommunications, Utlities, NFP, and Government to name just a few.

Photo by Vladimir Fedotov on Unsplash

We are taking a slight detour from the theme of the last several weeks  and asking what Quality Assurance means to you?

The classic definition, as per some of the pioneers of Quality Assurance (external to Software), is Process Improvement.

So you look at your existing processes and try to improve them.  Possibly your processes have extra steps or people are repeating information into multiple locations due to a lack of access.  These two are very common.  Someone needs something in a different format or someone needs something that requires them to extract something from the process.  We spend a lot of time doing this.  This can be hard to recognize when you in the middle of the process and under time pressure.  It takes a step back and a review of the process either from a distance or after many iterations – preferably both, and extending over a period of time so we can identify anything that is specific to the time evaluation and make sure our statistics are correct.  This has been a challenge for years and will probably continue.

So having said that, “What is your definition of Quality Assurance?”

If you see yourself above, use the link below to get in touch.

Give us a call to continue the discussion. We have supplied Assessment, Coaching, Consulting Management and Training to Financial, Telecommunications, Utlities, NFP, and Government to name just a few.

Photo by Antoine Dautry on Unsplash

For those who want to count, this is blog number 8 on “Staying In”!  We have been concentrating on what is occurring locally and in Ontario, Canada that currently means opening up.  Although it is slow and being done in stages, there is still a change.  

We thought we would look at some specific clients (with no names) and see what this means to them and what QA can do to help:

1. Utilities – unchanged.  Projects continued throughout the lockdown with remote access (part of the existing contingency plan) enabled.  The items that require physical access will now be done but everything else is ready.  Quality Assurance helped prepare the methodology.  We will see how successful we were in the next few weeks.
2. Financial – they have proved they can work remotely but the IT projects need to get done.  So we expect a resurgence in the need for Quality Assurance.
3. Retailers that were open throughout – Projects that were derailed by the necessity to concentrate on immediate issues will now come back with more time pressure.  Quality Assurance will need to pick up where we left off which can be done reasonably easily.
4. Retailers that were closed and are just now reopening face a different set of challenges.  Some were doing curbside pickup and contactless payments but others were effectively closed down.  Every opening is unique and depends on what the retailer sells.  This will mean new systems that can prove they are adhering to proper cleaning methods and keeping stock off the floor for an extended period (clothes) while still ensuring that it can be sold. Quality Assurance is process oriented and this is process.
5. Medical statistics  – we expect the projects to pick up but with a major change to move faster.  

If you see yourself above, use the link below to get in touch.

P.S. Next week we will discuss a new definition for Quality Assurance.

Give us a call to continue the discussion. We have supplied Assessment, Coaching, Consulting Management and Training to Financial, Telecommunications, Utlities, NFP, and Government to name just a few.

Photo by Antoine Dautry on Unsplash