Businesses today are being challenged with change at a pace never before experienced. In today’s dynamic business environment, companies must constantly adapt business processes to maintain a competitive edge, comply with corporate governance regulations or to simply gain efficiencies. This, in turn, means constant and on-going changes to the underlying software applications and IT infrastructure supporting the business processes. Changes to software applications always carry business risks – risks such as unplanned downtime, poor performance, customer dissatisfaction, lost revenue and more. Therefore, the pressure is on QA and IT organizations as never before to support business process change – this means delivering mission-critical software applications quickly while, at the same time, ensuring its reliability. To deliver software quickly, Software Quality Optimization (SQO) must be the centerpiece of software development and deployment.

The new mantra for software application development organizations is clear: Do it faster, better and cheaper. With past development and software quality practices, one could only attain two of the three factors at once. The business environment now requires all three for organizations to really capitalize on market opportunity – and, with the right software quality optimization initiatives in place, this goal is attainable.

Early and reliable discovery, management and correction of defects in requirements and design generate significant ROI for an organization – not to mention potentially enhancing customer perception of quality in a company’s brand image. Starting quality efforts early and paying attention to quality throughout the development, deployment and production effort is key to realizing potential benefits. Software quality processes must be integrated throughout the entire software application life cycle and across all of the groups responsible for quality within an organization.

The days when a quick testing phase was squeezed between the end of development and deployment date – if it was done at all - are long gone. So is the idea that quality can be “tested into” software. Quality assurance as a holistic concept embracing all aspects of quality management is now a firmly entrenched part of software development practices by best-of-breed companies. In these organizations, quality is planned into a software development project, starting with the requirements phase and extending into the production environment. Additionally, quality is an on-going, iterative process that occurs throughout the software application lifecycle.