Quality Assurance: Band-Aid Fix or Vaccine Cure to Software Projects
The Vaccine Approach to a Software Development Project: Quality Assurance as a Value Added Partner
Last week, I talked about the risks that go hand-in-hand with the Bandaid approach to software quality assurance. With the vaccine approach, software quality assurance is not seen as overhead or a bottleneck. Instead, it is a value added partner that brings transparency and visibility in software development predictability.
Significantly different than the Band-Aid approach, in the vaccine approach the software quality assurance team is dedicated, full-time participants within software development teams. They are co-located and work collaboratively with both the business and developers. Acceptance criteria is defined in collaboration with the business and integrated with requirements. This provides significant advantage over the “Band-Aid” approach to testing, both within projects and across the enterprise application portfolio.
The Vaccine approach to software quality assurance provides more than operational benefits. It strengthens both the delivery team and the quality assurance function overall. Being embedded with and dedicated to a development team, software quality assurance people are immersed in the business problem as well as the solution while it is being developed. Being fluent in the application, a tester is more likely to recognize the difference between an application failure and an environmental or situational blocker, and better prepared to correct the situation. As a result, they are less likely to raise false defect reports that create “noise” that masks the state of application quality and impairs team efficiency by wasting other people’s time in disposition.
This approach also protects quality assurance leaders. When able to work only part-time in any given project, software quality assurance can do little more than produce testing artifacts and perform tactical execution. Working in full collaboration with a project development team, however, allows the software quality assurance team to gain deep business knowledge. A quality assurance team that is immersed in the problem domain is in good position to be IT knowledge workers. This makes them better business problem solvers, and stronger participants in IT solution delivery overall.
Engaged Participant vs. Disengaged Auditor
The intended deliverable of any IT project is a technically sound, functionally fit business solution. This is achieved through the engaged participation of all IT disciplines, including infrastructure, requirement, development, and quality assurance. By only playing the role of auditor, the quality assurance team is a disengaged member of the solution team that certifies an application as production-ready. Alternatively, by collaborating from the early stages of the software development lifecycle, and executing quality assurance continuously throughout, the software quality assurance team works as a value-added partner that directly contributes to an increased understanding and gradual evolution of a business solution. Ultimately, this approach increases both the value of software quality assurance and the return on IT investments.
What steps can your team take to move from a bandaid approach to a more holistic approach to software quality assurance and testing?
Photo Credit: Andres Rueda
Category: Requirements Definition, Team Performance