Do Away With QA (Part 2)

  Requirements Management   ProjectsAtWork  

Organizations are releasing software as soon as possible, skimping on Quality Assurance, squeezing testers, and pointing fingers when it all goes wrong. As our series continues, we look at the second reason they should just do away with software QA completely — to test the code of the smartest programmers you must be even smarter.

Quality Assurance professionals are often the only defense we have in software development between utter disaster at worst and complete embarrassment at best. However, too many organizations don’t ever seem to learn the lesson that "quality is built in, not tested in.” So, with tongue-in-cheek, we have created a series that explores the top five reasons why we should just eliminate the software QA position. This is part two.

1. The demand for new code will always exceed the demand for quality code.

2. To test the code of the smartest programmers, you must be even smarter.

The smartest, most talented, and highest-paid software people are employed to develop new code, not test software quality (while the greediest software people are employed in sales, and the most megalomaniacal in marketing, but I digress).

And even these "super developers" make mistakes for any number of reasons — ignorance of non-functional requirements, hangovers, mental blind spots, hubris. Few people are more dangerous to …

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