A longtime Software Consortium client serves over 60 million passengers across the U.S. and generates over $2 billion in sales annually, so the quality and performance of its revenue generating, customer-facing systems is mission-critical. The client was willing to take risks to change their approach and reap the benefits of a centralized quality assurance (QA) initiative, since Software Consortium had already proven their abilities by managing their website and mobile device channels, which generate $750 million in revenue annually.
According to Forrester Research, quality assurance has lagged behind software development in being strategic about its approach. As a result, high defects, low efficiency and other obstacles mean that quality assurance is often the stumbling block to producing software in a cost effective, timely manner.
The Director of Quality Assurance's vision would reap countless benefits, including quality improvements, reduced costs and increased speed to market of new systems.
"I wanted to shift us from departmental testing silos to a true center of QA excellence that would centralize and consolidate the organization and use common processes, best practices and tools," said the Director of Quality Assurance. Software Consortium worked closely with him, his team and multiple stakeholders to make the center of QA excellence a reality.
A key organizational benefit for the centralization and consolidation of quality assurance is an ever-increasing repository of testing experience and knowledge about the domain, tools, system and business. The goal was to leverage this repository for any business channel that needs it. With streamlining, naturally comes more effective and efficient testing, thereby increasing the return on investment for the business while improving the quality of testing. In addition, all stakeholders benefit from the knowledge transfer, additional cross training and cross pollination of best practices. Lessons learned from one application can easily be applied to other projects. Application quality and uptime improve, while lowering costs and reducing time to market.
The Technical Details of the Approach
The QA consolidation program encompassed the client's portfolio of customer facing systems, a wide range of 24x7x365 business-critical and revenue generating applications, including:
- web services
- mobile ticketing
- reservation systems used by ticket agents, kiosks and call centers
- systems for maintenance reporting
- food and beverage services
- point of sale systems
Software Consortium partnered closely with the client, his team and other organizational stakeholders to... Read on for key take-aways you can use.
When you are considering major initiatives in the enterprise, bringing expert talent in to support your team is a key strategy for success. Software Consortium can help you, and your team, make the right decisions and navigate the challenges to reach your destination: your program success.
