Currently companies and delivery teams take testing as non complex activity and works through as it does not have a significance in the delivery pipeline. This is not limited to any specific team nor a startup or a well established corporation. Also not limited to any specific industry too. Many companies have test practices team/department, whose sole responsibility is to come up with proper test practices, focused on high quality deliveries. They come up with gating criteria, test metrics, provide stellar test engineers with right certifications and trainings. But most of the time testing is what is pushed against the wall when it comes to delivery. The biggest challenge we see currently is ignorance. Testing, most of the time is interchanged with V&V and QA. At Simply the right people in the delivery pipeline are not educated on quality assurance and the impact of quality regardless of positive or negative outcomes. The art of any great transformation begins with basics, identify the right people and identify how QA will be impacting them, and then educate them. This should not just limit to technical engineers, but sponsors, business and other relevant should be a part of this process/plan. Getting the buy-in from people who knows about QA is much easier when it comes to the phase of implementing processes and practices. With the right level of education, foundation has laid for a great QA transformation, where everyone have quality in front of mind. Test engineers have great attitude towards quality, and they will work as QA advocates amongst teams to educate, train and market the significance of quality assurance. This will lead to proactive work on implementing processes and practices, which should focus on fit-for-purpose and easily digestible. These digestible process and practices are worked together with the other stakeholders who now has the knowledge on QA.

(Also I will be talking about couple more techniques on training developers, fit-for-purpose QA frameworks, and QA metrics)