“Roadmap to Quality” – Panel discussion at SofTec 2012 Conference

SofTec 2012, Bangalore, July 14, 2012

The panel discussion on “Roadmap to Quality” was brilliant due to the cross-pollination of interesting ideas from non-software domains. Three of the four panelists were from non-software domains – Mehul@Arvind Retail, Soumen@GM, Raghavendra@Trellborg with lone exception of Murthy from Samsung, with moderation done by Ashok@STAG.

The key take ways from the panel discussion are:

  1. Continuous monitoring helps greatly as this is like a mirror that reflects what you do constantly, this is what Mehul@Arvind highlighted as being important in his domain of apparel/retail business. Ashok connected this to dashboards that are becoming vogue in our workplace, more in the Agile context
  2. Soumen@GM stated the importance of early stage validation like Simulation, Behavior modelling in the Automotive industry, as the cost of fix at the later stage is very expensive. The moderator connected this to “Shift Left”, the new term in our SW industry- how can we move validation to earlier stage(s)?
  3. Raghav@Trellborg a component manufacturer of high technology sealing systems stated need of understand of understanding the final context of usage of the component as being very important to know to ensure high quality. He also stated testing is deeply integrated into the “shop floor” i.e. daily work and the most important aspect of quality is not QA or QC but the underlying the Quality Systems in place. How do Q systems ensure that quality is deeply entrenched into the daily life. The moderator highlighted the fact the in software industry we have implemented systems, but these are still at an organizational level and the need of the hour in SW industry is to institutionalize these at a personal level
  4. Finally Murthy stated level of quality needed is not the same in all domains, in certain domains (like mobile) that have disruptive innovation and short life cycles, “we need just enough quality”. He highlighted the need to understand “technical debt” that we can tolerate as a driver for deciding “how much to test”

You can also read the special news on the panel discussion on Silicon India website.

Relavent topics:
a. Software testing lacking serious effort