We reform how you...
High quality testing is game changing. It provides the essential operational intelligence and quality control that underpin sound delivery. Establish an autonomous first rate testing practice at the heart of the delivery machine and your chances of success soar.
Poor relation or key contributor
Testing can be the “poor relation” discipline, lacking a voice at the table and deferring to other “more knowledgeable” players. This is asking for trouble. It incurs expense on ineffective testing. It turns the radar off.
A first team player
Testing should be both intelligence service and attack dog. Autonomous and inquisitive its remit should be to challenge assumptions, group think and happy path myopia. Its day job is to aggressively check the outputs of other disciplines. Its “voice” should carry the same authority as the “design voice” or the “development voice”.
Providing value for money
However, testing needs to provide value for money. To do so it needs to be lean and focused. A casual approach using mediocre brute force testing is wasteful as well as ineffective. Work that adds no value must be stopped. Intelligent informed testing is the way to provide value for money.
Avoid the trap
Don’t fall into the trap of leaving testing to the development organisation or of positioning it as a necessary evil under the supervision of project management. High value add and improved programme outcomes go hand in hand with an autonomous capable, well motivated and empowered assurance team. Recognition that it is a specialist discipline that needs to operate as such and needs to be led by informed management is the way to achieve best value.
Our track record
SQC has been delivering autonomous testing within software industry since the 1990s. Long before testing became a fashionable consulting proposition. We have transformed the remit, ethos and ways of testing for organisations large and small. Along the way we have taught new disciplines and practices to others. We have shaped and led the establishment of enterprise scale testing services for global players in the telecommunications and finance worlds.
Our team
Our team has led testing on some of the most complex and challenging programmes and development pipelines out there. It includes people who have owned the testing budget of global players with thousands of testers. It includes people who can work hand in hand with developments and delivery leads. It includes people that CxOs go to when they need people who make a difference.
What sort of help might you need
Simply need to start effective testing where there has been none? Want to raise the game of your existing organisations? Dissatisfied with the results of an existing supplier and looking for a better solution? Suffering from low quality and late delivery despite spending on testing? Have a really challenging project you know needs something better?
Transformation services
We can act in an advisory capacity assessing and improving your existing capability or helping to reshape it to a new model. We can augment your management team bringing our expertise to bear on your problem. Tell us about the issues you face and your aspirations and we can work with you to deliver the right solution.
Test Innovation and Transformation
Distributed Agile Product Development Testing - A development team wanting to “go Agile” in London and a remote test centre in the Far East. A history of slow delivery and quality issues. Not an easy situation, but eventually a success story. The use of exploratory testing, done alongside the development team, to discover and pilot test patterns, the proactive transfer of this knowledge to scout testers in the factory location who then fed this into the test factory for full implementation provided an effective answer. The approach delivered early feedback, alignment across development and test and effective disciplined product testing whilst keep waste down to a minimum.
Test Value & Effectiveness Review - Faced with a huge, disproportionate, amount being spent on testing a value and effectiveness review was initiated by this blue chip organisation. Our assessment found a rather disjointed operation with little awareness of cost control. Activities had become unfocussed and wasteful. Things were being done without clear reasons why. Recommendations were for a focus on lean test delivery and to establish value for money culture across in management domain.
Consolidation of Enterprise Test Activities - Historically this organisation performed testing as part of project or system support activities. There were small teams scattered across the landscape. These teams had no consistent practices. The organisation was not getting the benefits that come from a proactive test operation pulling work to completion. Activities were consolidated into a single test operation with an assertive ethos and an effective leadership team. Costs were reduced whilst the value add of testing activities increased.