Do Away With QA (Part 3)

  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 third of five reasons that they should just do away with software QA completely — that is, management needs scapegoats.

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.

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.

3. Management Needs QA Scapegoats.

If the smartest, most talented, and highest-paid software people are employed to develop new code, not test, then managers are going to have a hard time motivating them to do the right thing, and accept the fact that well-developed tests are just as important as well-developed code for quality business software that must always function properly.

This will be true even if the uber-developers are not prima donnas, and are willing to try test-…

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