Do Away With QA (Conclusion)

  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 concludes, we look at the final two reasons that they should just do away with software QA completely (but not really).

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 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 scapegoats.

4. Untested code is technical debt most easily created and kept out of sight

Our first three posts covered the structural reasons why creating new code without adequate testing of software quality remains endemic. But what happens once all that code gets released into the wild?

What happens is actually beta-testing by your customers, only they don't know it.

Assuming the release doesn't blow up entirely, the defect reports will start to arrive via support, sales, …

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