Whether you are a software or product development company, you cannot deny that your entire day to day operations rely on stable and reliable software systems. From emailing or calling your customers to an online system to manage your stock or business. Everything is IT and software! And if it doesn’t work, you’re f***d. Your employees are technically unemployed, you are losing money and receiving customers complaints due to delays or mistakes.

How long do you want to accept that as normal and do nothing to change it? Or are you finally ready to

• Deliver products and systems efficiently, with as few frustrations and interruptions as possible for your operational personnel?
• Reduce costs by having your operational personnel focus on their own tasks rather than ‘testing’, maintenance and customer service?
• Have IT resources who can focus on delivering new features you desperately need, instead of fixing the old?
• Ensure that the systems you purchase through outsourcing (customized) development work well with your existing landscape?

In short, do you want to be less concerned about IT and the systems you use daily? Don’t you just expect them to work?

How to implement your QA test strategy?

Everyone is always talking about how to improve development processes with an Agile (SAFe) approach, DevOps, Continuous Development and Deployment. Or any other magic fix to increase efficiency and deliver high-quality software quickly. But in all these efforts to improve, one major factor is often overlooked or underestimated. Implementing and really embedding a mature QA test strategy that works for your IT (company) processes, budget and culture!

Improving your QA maturity appears to be a simple task but often it’s not the case. Firstly, the tricky part is that everyone in your company, or any development party with which you work, has their own opinion about it. This makes it difficult to roll it out, make it work, and find consensus. Second, no one has the time or resources to take it on as an extra task and treat it as a project on its own. And finally, no one has the necessary QA experience to look at it from a helicopter view and improve it for your entire IT department and company.

Often these improvement tracks are only concerned with writing a theoretical QA test strategy that no one reads or uses. Another common thing we see happening is ad-hoc test automation trials that are not future proof, not covering the right areas, not embedded in a pragmatic QA approach, and require extensive maintenance. These efforts are frequently ready to be thrown away after only one year, resulting in no one believing in its strengths or ROI anymore. One thing is certain, you don’t want to experiment with QA and testing because you risk losing all buy-in from your teams or managers, as well as a lot of money while trying.

BrightScan to help you out

Brightest can help preventing the loss of all that money, efforts and motivation by conducting a BrightScan. This is a thorough screening assessment on your IT organisation, taking into account all influencing factors in other areas. Because we just know from experience that high quality is not only achieved by ‘testing’ applications after development is completed. High quality systems are achieved by involving the necessary resources at the right time. Each with their own set of strengths and skills. As a result, QA and ‘testing’ must be properly integrated into your entire process, working for you rather than being a hindrance.

A BrightScan takes about two weeks and results in concrete and prioritized steps andquick wins to improve your QA testing maturity. All of this presented in a realistic roadmap. These short- and long-term recommendations are tailored to your IT (company) processes, people, technology, culture, constraints and budget. But are always based on best practices developed through years of experience with QA and test improvement tracks. This way, you can always grow and improve, even if you have a small budget and limited resources.

After this, you’ll know where to start and won’t have to waste money on trial and error. You can choose to implement the improvement recommendations yourself or hire an expert QA coach to guide you through the improvement process based on your pace, timeline, budget and priorities.

Your benefits

Assessment and advice at all levels of your (IT) organisation

• A strong focus on QA maturity growth, efficiency and ROI within IT
• A realistic guide and roadmap with a long-term vision
• Optimisations taking your budget and business into account
• Implementation on your own pace and timeline

Tired of wasting money while trying?

Quit worrying about what will happen if your try, ask yourself what will happen if you don’t? Take a look at our solution page for more information about our BrightScan or contact us.

Written by Joke Gijsbrechts