Requirements management and configuration management are required for anything that even closely resembles effective testing.  Experience suggests failing in these two areas unnecessarily complicates the product verification activities, and we will show some of those traumas in the next few posts. 

An iterative and incremental product development process calls for reviews throughout the development process.  There have been times when people did not understand this concept and have attempted to test the product at the end – just prior to launch. Guess what? That rarely works. You will usually find problems (and sometimes very bad ones) just prior to the time you were going to launch the product. Think about the hundreds or thousands of interactions and interpretations that have to happen just right to launch the product like that! Not probable! 

Just like the project manager monitoring the schedule to evaluate whether the project is on time, so too should there be monitors in place to see if the product quality will meet the prerequisite.  To do this we must have continuous or recurring assessments monitored over time to ascertain the quality.

We can do many other things to help understand the product quality. In previous blogs we have talked about requirements reviews and FMEA’s. Each of these fills a role in securing the product quality. So also does our change management and requirements management.

We should constantly critique the steps to achieving the product as well as the product to understand the quality. In that way we are actively learning from the as we progress with the work rather than learn something at the end when there is no time remaining to meet any challenge. Contrary to what many may believe, testing is NOT the final activity we will conduct upon the product prior to launch.  Prudent development ensures we have reviews, evaluations, and testing to determine the quality (ask about our TIEMPO plan). We are more than just testing and not solely at the end of the development cycle to assure the quality of the product.