What Influences the Product's Quality?
A few days ago I went to a customer of mine that wants to produce a higher quality products.
The main candidate for the modification was the QA group because the QA group is responsible for the quality in the development process.
After a short investigation it was shown that not only the QA team should be modified but all the "players" that take part in the development process of the products should be a part of the change.
Some of the conclusion were:
- better requirements should be written so that the QA will have its main input for the quality process.
- A change management process should be established so all changes made after the planning phase will be properly checked for there influence on the development process.
- Unit tests should be written by the developers.
- Bugs should have a proper work flow not only inside the QA team but thru all the bug's lifecycle.
These are not all the conclusions from our investigation, but it can show that changes should be made thru all the application lifecycle in order to get a better quality.
It is a common mistake to blame the QA for a poor quality of a product, I don't say that this is not the case the QA team has the biggest influence on the quality, what I say is that a more comprehensive investigation should be made in order to see what the problem really is before we put the blame...