Virtusa showcase top industry QA standards and business opportunities at SLASSCOM Quality Summit 2010

9-Sep-2010

A Q&A with Chandana Ranasinghe, Director Quality Assurance and Dhanushka Ranganath, Manager Quality Assurance at Virtusa.  Connect with Chandana and Dhanushka on http://www.facebook.com/VirtusaCorp

Introduction

The SLASSCOM “Quality Summit 2010”, which took place recently at Cinnamon Grand Colombo attracted industry experts and businesses with the aim of promoting Sri Lanka as a testing destination. The summit was an ideal opportunity for IT/BPO CXOs and quality practitioners to learn how quality can be used as the key differentiator in building competitive advantage and achieving global success.  The summit covered three tracks: Process, BPO and Quality Assurance (QA). Virtusa, as a leading IT services provider, showcased the company’s QA expertise.


Chandana Ranasinghe, Director Quality Assurance Virtusa& Dhanushka Ranganath, Manager Quality Assurance at Virtusa

Chandana Ranasinghe and Dhanushka Ranganath expressed their views on the following.

Q1: What is the size of the Software Quality Assurance market? And what is Virtusa’s strategy?

The software industry has witnessed a dramatic rise in the impact and effectiveness of software quality assurance recently. From its day of infancy, when a handful of software pioneers explored the first applications of quality assurance to the development of software, software quality assurance has become integrated into all phases of software development. There is a global demand for high quality, innovative products and services with quick go-to-market strategies and minimal investment. Despite the average allocation of 30-40% of IT budgets for testing, organizations struggle to test software efficiently and effectively.

Virtusa’s testing services help organizations deliver high value business solutions. Our domain and industry-focused testing services ensure that our client's IT applications meet growing business needs with high performance and availability. By partnering with Virtusa, our clients leverage our in-depth experience in test methodologies, automation frameworks, tools and processes. At Virtusa, an industry‐strength QA process is an integral part of every one of our engagements. Virtusa with its expertise in SQA has developed a unique point of view with its Software Quality Assurance approach, an innovative SQA methodology that extends beyond defect reduction.
 
Q2: What is Virtusa’s vision for achieving high level software quality?

According to research published by the Carnegie Melon University, only 7% of companies have successfully achieved the highest levels of software quality maturity. Many of the companies that have achieved this distinction are product companies that have focused on demanding quality programmes through process rigor.


•    93% of companies are operating at a low or medium level of QA maturity
•    The successful 7% have achieved a significant reduction in overall IT spend while accelerating time to market

Ironically, the benefits of achieving higher levels of quality are not an increase in cost but an overall reduction in overall IT spending while accelerating time to market. The secret behind the successful 7% (“Leaders”) is the relentless focus on defect prevention and thereby reaping the benefits of significant reduction in the total cost of software development. As the table below shows, Leaders spend 70% of their test effort on defect prevention and only 30% on rework.

In 2004, software defects cost the industry $60B – NIST
(National Institute of Software Testing)

Success Stories:  Hewlett Packard reports that over a period of 9 years, they saved more than $350 million dollars. IBM achieved a 50% quality improvement in the 1 year of implementing a Defect Prevention process.

As figure 3 above shows, the cost of identifying and fixing a defect grows exponentially in later stages of the software development lifecycle. For example, the cost of finding a defect introduced in the Requirements phase is $139. Finding and fixing the same defect in the Testing stage jumps to $7136 and $14,102 in the Maintenance stage.

The benefit of finding and fixing a defect in the stage where the defect is introduced is very significant. At the same time, the 93% laggards are caught in a vicious cycle as articulated below:

•    Cycle of ‘chasing defects’ resulting in constant and overwhelming rework
•    Delays in enhancement releases due to unexpectedly high effort on trying to fix an increasing numbers of defects
•    Testing activities start late in the software development lifecycle
•    Actual time available for testing gets crunched due to late changes incorporated into the requirements/design/code
•    Limited or no focus on defect trending analysis, root-cause analysis and defect prevention
•    Higher cost and poor customer satisfaction due to delays and production issues

In these organizations, software quality investments are reactive.

Q3: What is Virtusa’s approach to improving quality of software built by customers?

Using Virtusa’s Testing Maturity Model, our clients can leverage Virtusa’s industry experience, process maturity and best practices to mature the testing organization to be “best-in-class” and improve agility in servicing its business over its engagement. Virtusa delivers the transformation iteratively in three steps:

1.    Assessing “As-is including quick wins”,
2.    Transitioning delivery to improved processes while implementing quick wins and
3.    Applying process improvements for continuous transformation.

Virtusa is leveraging knowledge, experience and people from our twelve year track record in working with many Fortune 500 clients, as well as our transition methodology to accomplish this goal.

Q4: Is there a case study where Virtusa has applied this approach?

Yes, one of the best examples is where Virtusa helped to build a testing Centre of Excellence for a large healthcare service provider. This was a journey over 12 quarters from 2005 to 2007. We followed an incremental approach with the following phases: