The last couple of years, clients start to focus more and more on testing (quality control) and that’s good… if they do it for the right reasons. In all of the cases, till now, clients gave more focus to testing because the users of the software system found too many defects, were not pleased by the change of processes, didn’t like the user interface … in general, their confidence in the department/company delivering them the software sunk. Enough to question the supplier if they even had tried out (tested) the software.
Managements in general are very sensitive to these kinds of threats and their reaction is to increase the effort in testing.
But is testing or verification and validation the evildoer?
Let’s start with two basic questions.
Why is confidence decreasing?
Why are so many defects going to production?
In the past years we tried to find an answer to these questions and asked them to a number of end-users. Each time, questioning the next answer.
What we found out is so basic that we couldn’t believe it at first. Both questions lead back to one answer: “The lack of transparency”. Transparency can mean different things in different situations. For customers/end-users it means that they have a clear view on how the supplier or development team is handling ‘their’ application. Being sure that the supplier has tested the application is one thing. Knowing that all their (user) needs are covered in the application is a second thing. It also proved that increasing this transparency increased the overall quality of the software product and decreased the number of defects finding their way to production.
It also grew the understanding at end-user side that flawless software doesn’t exist and that often defects found in production were in fact detected during testing, but were considered as tolerable.

Having over 20 years experience in IT, over 7 years experience in analysis (business and functional), over 10 years experience in quality control and quality assurance, working in the banking & insurance industry, as an internal employee or as an external consultant (KBC, FORTIS, DEXIA, ING, Winterthur (AXA)).
During my management experience in the ‘banking and insurance world’ I have worked in highly regulated environments where adherence to a methodology was mandatory as well as in environments where methodologies had to be introduced and customized to fit the company’s policy and strategy.
I have worked in the field and experienced the day by day needs of development teams, maintenance teams and support teams. I used this practical experience combined with common sense and knowledge of methodologies and international standards to create or adapt processes and to mould these processes into practical work-flows.