Testing and QA Challenges

How much of Testing and QA is enough?

This is a question many executives, senior management, IT managers et. al would be asking themselves.

With the recent failures at Apple and Toyota in this phase of development and/or production, the executives must have surely revisited this and have had discussions on where things can be improved to avoid such mistakes going forward.

Running a successful business is a challenging task. The management always works towards striking the right balance to deliver a product that satisfies the customer demand, ensure that the product is safe and secure and also, that it delivers what is promised. In doing so, the team must ensure right profit margins are maintained to ensure successful running and growth of the business. With increased competition in the market and reduced product shelf life, businesses are facing another challenge - Time to Market (TTM).

I was involved with a public sector organization that faced a vaguely related challenge. This organization managed a big website that went through six week release cycles with new ‘products’ introduced to keep it competitive. With these frequent changes, came struggles to ensure safety and security of the visitors along with delivering the product(s) as promised. Obviously, with short release cycles came shorter Testing and QA windows. Eventually, in such an environment Testing and QA tends to gravitate towards being a checklist than what it is really intended to achieve.

Of course, with the shorter TTM and short Testing/QA durations, there are cost constraints to ensure the business is still viable. Surely, this is an important question - how much of it is enough? With no simple answers, I believe (and you can add to this) the bare minimum that an organisation can do is:

• Effective communications between teams


• Plan well and revise those plans as necessary


• Use skilled staff for Testing and QA (don’t get diverted by an incident!)


• Retest after remediation (this is often missed!)

Certainly, hardware tests should undergo more rigorous and prolonged testing cycles than software products. It is always smart to blame it on software! All one needs is a much awaited 'update'. No product recalls! I bet the next gen Toyota will come with a network port :) Until then, Apple will try and fiddle with the on-screen graphics and ‘set a higher bar’ ;)