Outsourcing Quality...
by Jame (personal)
I've often said that if you don't have the capacity or capability to do something that is essential to your business, you should assess outsourcing it... (and/or hopefully "nearsourcing" it to support local economies).
In my experience, very few organizations have the capabilities required to execute on common and essential quality management disciplines. In the software development world that may mean a formalized testing strategy, and in the manufacturing world that means broader quality assurance and management measures.
At Sunaptic Solutions we decided early that Quality was going to be a true differentiator for us, knowing that few of our competitors did more than pay lip service to formalized quality assurance practices and methodology.
We spent time and budget developing a team of dedicated Quality Engineers (not just "failed software developers") that not only had a deep engineering background, but also had the aptitude, dedication and discipline to ensure quality standards are met (and exceeded). We also invested in the development of best practices, processes and even formalized training on the subject, all under the watchful eye and management of Carles (my head of quality engineering).
An interesting company, CreationStep based in Toronto, has taken the approach to create, develop or partner with a number of smaller niche and highly specialized groups (Indoor Playground, Service Cloud, etc.). The latest, based on Mark Dowds' latest blog post, is QA Room, which promises to "improve your code and reduce your support costs".
If you don't have the capability or capacity to make quality a core competency of your software company, consider outsourcing it to someone who does ... maybe QA Room.
No problem Mark... in fact it is a great idea, and one that I had tossed around with Carles (mentioned in my post) in the past. QA (and the discipline associated with it) can be a difficult sell for customers that are cost conscious, but the ironic truth is that though there is a marginal cost/effort investment up front there is consistent returns over the life of the product/solution.
We always thought a "Centre of Excellence" concept for software testing and quality assurance would do well, especially if you had the right people selling it.
-- jame healy
Jame, thank you for the kind comments and detailed review. Much appreciated