Creating Quality over Testing

A big challenge lies in delivering your product with the desired amount of quality. One direction is to strive for 100% test coverage on all levels in the V-model [V-Model (software development) — Wikipedia]. Vast amounts of effort and money are spent trying to reach this goal. Is this the most effective and efficient way to deliver quality?

Testing tries to catch errors in your product. There is always a need for testing. Shifting your focus to quality vs testing opens a range of innovative ideas. For example, starting with preventing errors from being made is more effective than test preparation and test execution to find these errors. Efficiency can be improved by automation in all areas of your development and test environment.

Hyper-automation

Ideally, we want to strive for a development environment that is hyper-automated. Such a streamlined development environment ensures quality by design. Test efforts can be reduced in the left and the right side of the V-model. Find faults earlier with automation and earlier fault detection triggers a shift left on the right side of the V-Model. A focus shift on the left side of the V-model can be made by using digital twins and Model Driven Engineering (MDE) solutions [Model-driven engineering — Wikipedia]. This produces code of a higher quality that is highly suitable for fully automatic testing.

A perception shift is needed. Approach quality in a holistic way to improve both effectiveness and efficiency. Many organizations have parts of the puzzle in place or are experimenting with them. Without the vision and/or program it is difficult to bring all puzzle pieces together to come to a sustainable solution with continuous improvement and innovation.

Testing is a means to an end; quality is the goal. Shift focus from testing to creating quality opens the way to continuous improvement. The engineering process will require less effort and enables higher quality while at the same time reducing the time-to-market.