I had a chance to go through World Quality Report 2020-21. It had two new trends in 2020 that struck me with regards to Software Quality: 1. Quality at Speed: Speed up software releases with good quality, 2. Automate: Make QA and Software Testing a smarter automated process
Speed has definitely become a necessity because customers require the least downtime and superior performance, for which continuous delivery in a fast manner is necessary to correct problems. But ‘Quality at Speed’ is baffling. There are different dimensions to Quality – depending on who looks at it. It involves a human thought process, which orchestrates moves towards Quality – either be it Shift-Left or Shift-Right. So can Quality be sped up to accommodate in CI/CD pipelines? It’s a highly subjective topic, and only time has to answer.
QA becoming a smarter ‘automated’ process is also baffling because of the same reason that Quality involves human thought process. While automation can assist and help in serving/executing tasks/checks towards achieving Quality, “Quality Assurance” (I don’t agree with this phrase!) by itself cannot become an automated process!
We need to look at where we are leading in terms of Quality. Human thought process in Software development process should not be denied, and only then superior Quality can be achieved.
For Software Quality at Speed related discussions, feel free to contact me.