Without a proper QA process things can end up going a little bit wrong. Even the most basic of processes need to be checked and controlled, if they aren’t then things can end up going a little wrong. Just like these very nice bolt on headlights that I installed on my motorcycle recently, there are simple things which can cause all sorts of problems. A simple QA process at the light bar manufacturer would have caught the fact that the cowl on the left one only bolts on upside down. Now the cowl isn’t installed wrong, and it isn’t made wrong. The manufacturer simply put the wrong cowl in the package. Granted this is pretty easy to fix, I call the manufacturer and they send me out the correct cowl. But in the mean time my bike looks a little silly with an upside down cowl, and I have to wait for the new cowl to be delivered.
Just like in the IT space simple processes, like putting the correct cowl in the bag, need to be QA’ed to ensure that the system is running correctly as expected. Without these processes in place even the simplest things can break down. And in the IT world these things usually can’t be fixed as easily as sending out a new cowl to the client. It usually involves systems being down for hours, data being lost or compromised, or worse.
Hopefully you’ll review your testing and QA processes and fix any gaps in your testing processes.
Denny
One Response
One of the phases of QA is to load test database performance. In my experience, this comes as a critical item, as UI load testing only discovers surface issues, and with database load testing one can actually identify and resolve major sociability bottlenecks.
Enteros produces unique product – Load2Test, where database plug-in ZeroDev enables testers to record production database traffic of the SQL server (and other databases, such as Oracle, DB2, etc) and use it to create load test in QA/pre-production environment.
This approach enables truly authentic load testing.
Regards,
Ron Warshawsky
Enteros,
http://www.enteros.com