Quality Assurance Archive
A Better Way to QA
March 12, 2007
The past several years the Internet has been transformed by a slew of new web based tools and applications. A key success factor in all of these applications is adherence to a development methodology in which product teams release fewer features at a time, but release them at a greater frequency. Adherents to this methodology call this process “iteration.”
This methodology allows teams to:
- respond more quickly to customer feedback
- adapt the product based upon actual usage
- become more agile in the marketplace
However, this methodology requires a discipline that is difficult for many to obtain and maintain. That is because it is a radical departure for most software development companies who have deeply ingrained habits and cultures built up around more rigid and waterfall like approaches to software development.
For those that have made the transition to this Agile Development model, what is most intriguing is that while engineering teams and product management have undergone a tremendous process revolution the process of testing software has remained relatively unchanged. And for those companies, I ask you, how agile can your process be when chances are your QA engineers are still testing software the same way they did five years ago and ten years ago?
About Byrne Reese
Byrne Reese is a product manager by day and an engineer by night.
He conceived of Test Run to help project managers like him stay up to date and informed of what his team was working on.