7 January 2016

Top 3 Quality Assurance Imperatives for CIOs & CTOs This Year

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Source: Translators & Transcreators

Happy new year to everyone and I hope you enjoyed your well-earned holiday break! In order to make your transition back to work as smooth and simple as possible, we've outlined the top three quality assurance areas that every CIO & CTO (and equivalents) should concentrate on this year:

Invest in risk-based software testing

Why spend millions of dollars doing the very things that have achieved sub-optimal results time after time? You should not accept testing programs that test only the convenient things and result in "oh s!#t" moments the day after a new patch or version is applied throughout your system.

It's time to invest your team's energy and resources into an objective risk assessment methodology that identifies the most risky processes based on key business and technological parameters.

This will help in optimising and allocating resources to test those process that are more likely to go wrong and / or more likely to cause widespread financial, reputational or operational damage if they fail.


Automation, automation, automation

Automated software testing is a much-maligned concept, and unfairly so in my eyes. Automation is vital in the right context: think washing machines, cars (depends on who you ask), digital marketing, lighting, Facebook birthday posts, .... , and software testing.

Of course not everything can or should be automated, but that which should is much higher than most traditional testing minds would have you believe. This is the year of objectively understanding what should be automated and doing it.

A manual tester may cost half the price of an automation expert, but do the math and you'll find that your payback period in creating and running automated tests would only be a matter of days (for complex systems), or at most a few months.

Especially if you are undertaking a digital transformation program, have a think about the innovation that that you can drive (not to mention the resultant reputational enhancement) with the resources you save by switching from manual or automated testing.


Develop dashboards & analytics that make sense

The right insights into your testing program at the right time can save your bacon and minimise a lot of inefficiencies. The key to good dashboards is simplicity, while maintaining the ability to deep dive when required.

Dashboards and reports fail when they are designed or collated merely to service the whims of senior executives. The good dashboards come to life when they are viewed and utilised as a living, breathing object that holds the clues to constant optimisation.

If you want more information about our software testing services and leading-edge testing tools, or help in achieving any of the above, get in touch:

Or call us on +61 3 7001 1430 or +44 20 3411 4974 if you're in the UK, or email solutions[at]qsometech.com

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