To answer this question, we need to first understand that unless the SQA Leader has already implemented Testing as a Service (TaaS) and is generating a sizeable supplementary revenue stream (an SQA ‘side-hustle’ if you will) via the sale of their test assets as a service to paying customers, then the services the SQA function provides to their own company are most likely to come at a relatively sizeable cost, and one which the company executive management, with their weighty responsibility for controlling the company’s cash flow, instinctively prefer to minimise, because more cost means less profit – right?
After all, procuring test equipment isn’t always easy or cheap; developing test infrastructure can be complicated and time-consuming; SQA engineers’ salaries are increasingly comparable to those of software developers’; and all that investment in SQA could be spent instead on employing more developers, to produce more lines of code, and create more software
products – right?
But let us pause and reflect as to what the fundamental role of the SQA Leader is and how they add value to a company’s saleable software product portfolio. Popular definitions for SQA are to be found in [1], [2], and [3] and can be summarised as:
To create an SQA function that provides a continuous information service to the company executive management that will enable them to objectively and predictably establish the quality of the company’s software products, decide whether this quality meets the customer’s actual requirements, and take any corrective actions in a timely manner that will increase both the company’s and the customer’s confidence in the quality of the company’s software products.
Furthermore, and hiding in plain sight are the multitude of essential ancillary roles the more diligent SQA Leaders continuously perform, many of which go beyond the boundaries of only adding value to discrete saleable software products, and which are in fact integral to adding value to the company itself by establishing and underlining its most profitable asset: its brand reputation for software product quality.
So, let us now rewrite the fundamental role of the SQA Leader as:
To create an SQA function that provides a continuous information service to the company executive management that will enable them to objectively and predictably establish the quality of the company’s software products, decide whether this quality meets the customer’s actual requirements, and take any corrective actions in a timely manner that will increase both the company’s and the customer’s confidence in the quality of the company’s software products and its brand reputation for quality.
To define it more succinctly:
The proper investment in the SQA function will not only increase a company’s software product quality but will also add value to its brand reputation for quality, which will lead to increased customer confidence, which will lead to more sales.
And therefore:
The proper investment in the SQA function … will generate more company profit.
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