The Quality Assurance Evolution

By Alex Kok, Head of Digital Delivery, Boral

Alex Kok, Head of Digital Delivery, Boral

Software quality assurance has seen its own transformation over the last decade. Methodologies like ‘test-to-the-left’ have become the new norm as Digital Transformation is exposing a lot of challenges in the achievement of a sustainable high quality product delivery at break neck business pace. These new challenges have forced IT leaders to continuously strategize and plan the transition towards a future state that includes Industrial Revolution 4.0. What could this mean for the QA community and their future role?

Today, we are living in a world with smarter and mature software engineering technologies coupled with open and engaging Agile methodologies. Additionally, we now have the culture and tools that can realize any business goals. What has been the driving force for software quality transformation is now the must-have foundation for any organization in the midst of digital transformation. In the light of this, let us take a quick look at the current foundations of software quality assurance.

• Quality as an enabler to Product Speed-to-Market

Testing usually comes last in a software development plan. And it has always been the product owner and project manager’s nightmare because the efficacy of testing processes has an immediate impact on factors like release date and overall time to market. These are all critical factors to business success today. This can be made worse if the team lacks a well managed testing process that has been made consistent through automation. Hence, it is important for organisations to adopt and make DevOps, test methodologies that shift test-to-the-left, and test automation, a part of their core foundations to ensure speed to market is achievable and sustainable.

• Test Strategy for risk management

Customers and businesses care more about system availability, reliability and consistency. The challenge for the platform and application owner is about continuous new upgrades and features without breaking what is currently working. This is easier said than done when the system ecosystem includes any of these factors: a fragile network, fragmented operating systems, a large amount of mobile devices or legacy backend applications. It is not adequate for business leaders to have a list of critical bugs or issues affecting customers or system performance. Test strategy should include: performance monitoring, infrastructure agility, network redundancy, security governance, and device management. It can help businesses reduce risk by decreasing the likelihood that your business brings a buggy app that leads to unsatisfied users, losses in revenue or, worst of all, serious data breaches to the market.

Going forward, the inevitable realization is that, Industrial Revolution 4.0 is already here. Let us review how the following four factors will evolve in the new world of 'connectedness'.

• Value - A strong value alignment between QA and customer experience

Traditionally viewed as a cost centre, software quality assurance requires a good investment alignment with the product strategy.

With regard to testing, the challenge for fourth industrial revolution technology platform and application owner is about continuous ne w upgrades and features without breaking what is working

The return of investment needs to be transparent in order to prevent failure in pairing software development with testing, as failure will guarantee poor customer feedback. Therefore, to get the maximum value, one common mission statement that is aligned to Industrial Revolution 4.0 goals and outcomes will be the basis of a high performing quality assurance culture. QA team members are able to function as equal part of overall scrum team; they are technically competent, accountable and committed to achieving product roadmap and customer-centricity goals.

This would mean that regardless of the quality assurance team’s focus on core technology areas (e.g. chips, MEMS (micro-electromechanical systems), transducers, or core embedded software or actual applications (e.g. wearables, smart homes, smart buildings or intelligent grids), they still need to have a business outcome alignment to critical customer experience or business transformation.

• People - More than just software quality assurance

The shift towards building a QA Community of subject matter experts, is a natural extension to what QA resources can offer other than software quality expertise. In today’s product strategy and delivery roadmap, QA resources can assist in further maturing Agile Development Lifecycle and becoming the “Outcome QA” rather than just the Quality Assurance only. This will fit in with organization that adopts Agile philosophy: ‘Not Done Until The Dial Moves Up’.

In the world of connected vehicles, augmented reality devices, and innovative information modeling platforms, we will need dedicated and experienced quality engineers who can act as the subject matter experts that helps customers or businesses achieve a real-time feedback loop to the engineering teams. Quality assurance is no longer just focusing on the software or platform, their goal is to ensure the ecosystem works. Everyone: customers, businesses, and quality engineers can focus on fulfilling the Industrial Revolution 4.0 mission.

• Experimentation - Strategy that encompasses things beneath the (iceberg) surface

Businesses will need to manage cutting edge technology adoption and experimentation with new technologies related to Industrial Revolution 4.0 applications: Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR), Connected Devices, Robotics, Big Data and Blockchain to name a few.

Therefore, quality will need to ensure it can manage experimentation that requires (always on) connectivity, (always available) data for experimentation, accessibility and security, and scalability (performance and data). Traditionally, quality has been focusing on functional requirements but Industrial Revolution 4.0 is all about smart, hyper-connected, cyber-physical systems that help humans and machines cooperate to achieve shared goals, and use data to generate value. A new shift towards how product owners view non-functional requirements is required. It is critical due to higher level of complexities and a new 'Non-Functional 2.0standards’.

• Smart QA - Evolution

This trend will scale as business consumers will move away from cumbersome, complex and expensive platform upgrades or maintenance. I am talking about applying Industrial Revolution 4.0 innovation onto software application itself. Will there be a scalable test suite optimization capability or self- diagnosis technology platform with predictive analytics and self-remediation in the near future?

The permutations of possibilities and innovation are endless. This is where competitive advantage becomes a differentiator for early innovators. Future core technologies must have smart quality assurance built in, it is no longer a nice to have.

All of these points to the importance of each organization, adapting a coherent strategy that allows agility and innovation to bring forth the true transformation values that Industrial Revolution 4.0 promises.