Independent Quality Testing of Software Applications Directly Correlates to Improvements in Productivity

Author: Anand Ponnuswamy

May 2009

How many times do companies find themselves scrambling to complete the development of new software applications only to rush through the quality testing phases in order to meet pre-established deadlines for launch?  It happens all the time and companies pay dearly in cost overruns, productivity losses and delays.  

What if companies engaged an independent software verification and validation firm or team (separate from the software development team) whose expertise is testing software applications, and this team were engaged in all the phases of the project so that they were working in parallel with the development team right up to the launch date?

Need for Software Testing:
Today, with the current understanding of software development, product based companies and companies that have Information Technology (IT) as their non-core functions have begun to realize the importance of software Quality Assurance. Not long ago, it was common for companies to ignore or pay little attention to testing and release the software to production.  Applications were simple and the users were happy as long as the workflow functionality was positive and the business scenarios were adequately handled. Now companies are expecting their applications to do more things as they add features on top of the existing basic functionality. This adds to the complexity and need for handling alternative and negative scenarios. Based on these changing needs and demands, project managers are beginning to understand the financial implications and the importance of independent companies coming in to fully test the new applications prior to release.  Even today there are companies and individuals who strongly rely on the development team to do the testing and release it to production assuming it will save them money.    Some take the position that all software development will have “bugs” and they can be worked out over time after the release.  Therefore, they can save some money by either cutting corners or removing the explicit testing process altogether. Bad assumption!   The fact is that by cutting corners on the testing process early on in the project, companies are adding costs due to reworks, delays in the production launch, along with numerous break fixes which are done in the latter stages of the project. This non-conformance cost ends up being much higher than the original costs associated with a disciplined quality assurance process.  Using a proper quality assurance process, preferably from an independent team or firm, who specializes in software validation testing, will provide a pay-back on the investment many times over.  

Quality Process:
Many software validation providers are CMMi certified, Six Sigma certified and the best have other certifications as well.   These certifications do not necessarily mean that these providers come with high price tags.  In fact, Companies should be leery if software validation providers don’t come to the table with solid credentials.  The real importance here is the disciplines that these providers encourage as they work toward the common end goal in step with the application development team. Process oriented implementations when involved early in the development stages is literally the difference between success and failure.  

The solutions for quality process should be easily adaptable by the team without changing the whole world upside down. Everybody is reluctant to change, so embracing a quality process should be gradual and done delicately. Buy-in from the team, strong understanding and appreciation of the value-add brought by the effective processes should be there for smooth implementations. Successful quality processes support the team while keeping a watchful eye on the end goals.  A good quality process will transparently show cost savings and productivity improvements while launching the right product for the business needs.  


Customized Solutions:
Corbus is one such provider who specializes in customizing quality process solutions tailored to fit a client’s specific need.  Solutions include a step-by-step plan that will help the company move from one level of testing to another completely linking the process for smooth integration.  The solution would start with a qualified Quality Manager initiating the process at the client’s site, clearly understanding the existing processes, possible points of pain and most importantly, the expected end result. The Quality Manager will craft a plan to introduce or modify the documentation methodology based on the need. Quality Metrics will be defined, which will capture the current state and progress. Gathering metrics for the current state is often challenging for many reasons.  Clients are sometimes reluctant in bringing out issues for fear of cost overruns, admitting to errors in the project design stages, or just plain arrogance.  The maturity of an independent experienced provider who understands the problems and can work on the solutions will help the company ward off roadblocks early on and help the client teams grow together.  Where there are gaps in the metrics or the metrics are missing, steps must be taken to bridge those gaps. A plan is put together to improve the current release without impacting the release schedule. This will help in winning the team’s confidence and belief in implementing a disciplined Quality Process. The consecutive releases can be planned with these Quality processes in place. The metrics measurement will help the team members to better understand the cost savings involved with using a quality verification and validation process.

Cost Savings:
The first obvious cost savings in an effective customized process is the reduction of rework and break fix issues. Reusable assets developed during the process are significant value-adds in terms of cost savings and time for the delivery of the project. Metrics and tracking methodology provide effective means of representing the status and the progress. These metrics give the baseline for improvements in terms of quality of the product and productivity of the team. They can also be used to measure and compare similar projects. The measurement of the cost of quality with respect to non-conformance and conformance cost will paint a clear picture of cost savings.

Case Study of a Corbus Engagement on Cost savings:
An example of the above process with respect to non-conformance will demonstrate the severity of cost implications. This is a situation where non-conformance was running rampant.  The project was already significantly behind schedule.  The testing was being completed by the development team.  The first two phases of the project were executed with no formal quality process. The development team was actually quite experienced, but the quality controls were not implemented as the system was being integrated with multiple units and was not tested properly. The project failed two times and the Cost of Quality was as high as 30% of the entire project cost. During the third phase of the project, Corbus team professionals took control of the entire quality process and implemented some strong and aggressive quality measures. The testing team discovered 80% more defects than in the previous release because of proper test case writing and test planning. The metrics collected gave visibility to the entire executive committee and the stake holders. The testing team was able to deliver additional functionality, which was on the client’s wish list and delivered it successfully. Sixty percent of the defects were identified in the first testing iteration and 38% defects were identified in the second iteration. Conformance cost was approximately 16% of the overall project budget. The production launch was one of the most successful in company history.  The test cases (reusable assets) were reused in the future releases. These assets helped the management to invest in automation testing, which helped in regression testing of the application on all the following releases. The total cost of Quality reduced from 30% to 18%, which resulted in hard savings to the company of $200,000. The automation and the regression suite created during this process further reduced the cost of conformance and eventually the cost of quality for future releases.  

Having an independent quality assurance team that specializes in verification and validation of software applications prior to launch will turn out to be one of the best insurance policies a company can buy.