QA Consulting & Strategy

OPTEC Strategy

OPTEC has coupled our knowledge of Functional and Performance Validation & Optimization best practices with the Business Technology Optimization (BTO) vision to assist our clients in developing a comprehensive strategy for reducing the risks, cost, and defects of major system implementations. OPTEC has several strategic offerings to help our clients avoid today’s common BTO challenges and get the best ROI from their automated tools purchases. Our primary offerings are Centers of Excellence Implementation and Strategy Assessment & Roadmap These offerings have been specifically designed and implemented with our clients needs in mind so as to align the needs and expectations of our clients with our strategic service offerings.

Centers of Excellence (CoE)

Many companies today still approach testing as a one-off event and adopt a project, or line of business (LOB) specific approach to testing, with no enterprise standards, tools or methodologies. Each of these groups purchases their own tools, follows their own testing approaches and uses different templates for documentation. Besides being inefficient, this can cause oversight in testing coverage, confusion as to which QA documentation needs to be completed, and can be a scheduling headache for environment support groups.

By establishing a centralized testing organization that can support testing of applications throughout the enterprise, companies can leverage investments in approach, people, and technology to drastically reduce their cost of quality. Instead of multiple sets of tools (or none at all), a standard toolset is adopted that reduces procurement, maintenance and training costs. Instead of re-inventing methodology for each project, a single methodology is adapted to fit the project’s needs, reducing start-up time, saving money and providing QA consistency. Instead of re-training people over and over as project needs ramp up, a core team of trained QA professionals can be brought together as needed to meet the demands of individual initiatives.

This type of enterprise-wide testing organization is commonly referred to as a Center of Excellence (CoE). OPTEC has helped  companies in a variety of industries plan, implement and staff their Centers. Utilizing our  database of best practices gleaned from hundreds of engagements, we can assess where you are in the CoE maturity (see below) and develop a customized roadmap that outlines the major steps and milestones on your path to a fully implemented Center of Excellence.

Once the roadmap has been established OPTEC works with you to put the plan into action. Taking advantage of our pre-built library of processes, document templates, tool evaluations and role descriptions, we can help you quickly put in place the tools, standards and staff needed to begin transforming your testing organization. However, getting the CoE set up is really only half the battle and the true value is only realized when it is rolled out across the enterprise. While every organization is different, our experience with implementing CoE’s has provided special insight into the propagation strategies that yield the best results. Once the CoE is in place, we can work with you in a variety of models to help staff and run your CoE. These range from advisory and training to core team staffing and augmentation to meet peak project demand. And with our off-site capabilities, we can provide services such as long-term maintenance, staff augmentation and automated script development with a cost-effective, turn-key model.

Strategy Assessment & Roadmap

Some IT organizations and QA groups today do not have a clear strategy when it comes to software testing. Issues come in from the business or customers, requirements are gathered haphazardly (nor not at all ) and QA never truly gains a clear understanding of what needs to be tested. Code is then deployed with little to no QA, and everyone waits for the inevitable fall out from defects found in production, other issues caused by the fix, or even worse, an application or product that does not meet the needs of the customers.

OPTEC’s Strategy Assessment & Roadmap engagements are specifically designed to identify gaps in your current QA processes and to help you create a best-practices approach to quality. On these engagements, consultants with expertise in QA strategy evaluate your current QA methodology and compare it with industry best practices. After this current state assessment and gap analysis, we incorporate our findings and industry best practices into a future state vision that will achieve state-of-the-art system validation and optimization. We also provide a phased implementation roadmap that provides you with a manageable timeframe for rolling out these proposed changes.

Our Strategy Assessment & Roadmap offering are an excellent way for organizations to evaluate their current QA process against industry best practices. These engagements work to establish your baseline and develop a roadmap to take your organization to the next level.