Discover why having a quality assurance program is necessary for your business. And what exactly you should tell your bosses to convince them.
Many businesses face the following question “How can I justify developing a quality assurance program in the company?”. This question stems from a variety of factors that we address at the end of this post. But first, let’s consider the seven reasons for justifying a QA program in your business.
1. Your quality assurance program might underperform against your competitors
Using your sales team is one of the best ways to uncover how your current quality assurance program fares against your competition. They can get valuable feedback from the potential leads they are working with. And if you find out that you are performing sub-standard, you might want to investigate what is going wrong internally. For example, is your current quality assurance program led with a developer’s mindset? In which case, you could miss out on best practices in your software testing.
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2. High cost of customer and tech support
When somebody calls your business, how much does one call cost in tech support? You can easily calculate this by dividing the total cost of tech support with the number of calls your business gets in. You could find out that one call to the tech support easily cost between $50 and $100. So the question becomes then, “What can we do to reduce this call load?” If the calls load primarily comes from the software, it is likely because users don’t understand it. Or the software is not operating the way they want or expect it to. Another cause could be users cannot learn how to use the software. There are, therefore, many reasons, all tied to development in some way or another.
3. The number of bugs and defects found by users
Some of the questions that will come in from technical support, or your help desk, will be issues related to customer service tickets that turn out to be defects. And then the question becomes, “What percentage of these tickets end up being defects that escape out into the field of production
4. The inability of users to understand how to operate the software
This question relates to requirements, users experience, and usability. The business needs to think about using the software from a user point of view rather than from the company’s or developers. We highlighted this topic in the 5 Proven Signs Your In House Software Is Plagued With DDSS.
Another question that will help justify a quality assurance program relates to user satisfaction.
5. Client satisfaction as a justification for a quality assurance program
There are lots of ways to find out whether clients or end-users are satisfied. Surveys are one way to inquire about customer satisfaction. We all know that if customers are calling your tech supports frequently, your organization needs to address some issues with your software.
6. The lack of time developers spend developing new features
Some development teams only spend 30% of their time creating new features. In comparison, the remaining 70% is spent fixing defects or features that have not been developed completely or accurately in the beginning. The best way to make sure developers remain focused on development is by having a QA team that knows how to analyze requirements and make those complete and accurate. Which will in turn, help developers make the software according to what users want.
7. The time it takes to determine if the software is ready for release
A great number of companies have bottlenecks in regression or end-users user acceptance testing. On many occasions, people within the business are brought in and asked to do some acceptance testing. The problem with such an approach is the lack of rigor and expertise from these co-workers. Indeed, they are not professional testers and do not have a complete testing mindset. This method is not efficient and takes a lot of time to coordinate and complete user acceptance testing.
Factors for considering a quality assurance program
Growth phase
Your business is in the software development industry (or not) and is experiencing rapid and almost uncontrollable growth. However, you realize that the level of QA available internally does not match the pace of your expansion. For example, your original “QA” team could be made of developers, and you are now facing this dilemma: “Should I allocate my development resources to do QA and testing? In which case, I am taking focus away from the main business objective. Or should I build a quality assurance program from scratch, and have to justify the enterprise with zero background and no prior experience on how to choose a QA partner in establishing such as practice”? At least, as we have seen with the 7 key criteria in selecting your ideal software testing partner, you can sort this latter question relatively easily.
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Trying to develop an architecture of testing methods
Your business might want to discover and prevent defects before solution delivery. In which case a quality assurance program that has a professional pace will come in handy.
Your QA is developer-led
One of the main problems many businesses face is that initially, they think their developers can handle a complete quality assurance program by themselves. Then they realize that testing and development are two different areas altogether. Unfortunately, this implies you are likely to be missing out on best testing practices or tools.
Enhance your relationships with customers/supporters
You could also want greater control over your data’s capture and storage methods. Or you might be looking for ways to gather more insight into your end-users so that you can develop new offerings they will want to engage with.
Reduce data and financial compliance risks
Another reason why you could want a quality assurance program is to help you implement solutions that meet compliance requirements in your industry while enabling updates for future compliance requirements.
Streamline processes
Your business could also be looking for ways to improve its efficiency and productivity.
Whatever the reason is, your dilemma now is to justify a quality assurance program internally. That’s why we came up with seven questions to help guide your argumentation.
Conclusion:
Many professionals find it hard to measure QA productivity and therefore justify a quality assurance program. However, software failure costs money, both in the amount of time spent fixing the software and the loss of revenue generated as a consequence. Not having a QA is almost a guarantee that you will bleed money when your software falls prey to bugs and defects. Moreover, the sooner you find bugs in the cycle, the easier they are to fix. Just think of a QA practice as a team of engineers behind a highly performing racing car. If your pilot (developers) has to worry about the vehicle’s mechanics, he will never win a race. You hire high-level engineers (QA testers) so that the car (the software) is pushed to perfection by its driver (developers).
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