How To Get The Most Out Of A Technical Quality Assurance Process

by Nicki Carruth | Mar 28, 2023 | Technical Assurance

Technical Assurance is only becoming more sought after from IQANZ in New Zealand as the scale, stakes and complexity of IT projects is growing each year. Our work takes us into large organisations across many industries, and we’ve guided many teams in both private enterprise and government agencies. Technical Quality Assurance or technical QA (TQA), often comes to fruition when someone in the business has identified a need either before or after a project to observe best practices from that point on. Obviously, our advice is always to seek technical QA before the work starts – this may save a lot of money and time. But it’s very normal for an event like project failure or budget overruns to cause someone (or a group of people) to engage a partner like IQANZ to tighten up some deficiencies. In our experience, organisations and teams’ preparedness to receive the value from technical assurance varies. While we can provide value to any organisations trying to improve the way in which IT projects are delivered, those who’ve not done the groundwork may find that our support has to go deeper and broader than the project in question in order to affect positive change. A business who has prepared for quality assurance as part of their standard governance framework may find they get the insights they need quicker. In this article, we explore some ways that Kiwi organisations can tap into technical quality assurance easier and benefit more from the outcomes of this process. Are you looking to engage technical assurance? Keep reading to learn the best way to go about it.

Take the time to understand what technical QA is designed to do

Before engaging any professional services provider, it’s incumbent upon leadership and relevant business units to actually reconcile the problem the business has and what the service / offering would do to help address it. Quality assurance is one such service; our team is made of project professionals with extensive industry experience and methodologies that are proven to help drive success. Part of our initial engagement with potential clients is to both hear what challenges they have, but to also convey the practices and outcomes that a technical assurance process will deliver. This includes things like:

Requirements review and recommendations.
Architecture/Design review and guidance.
Development/Build quality assurance.
Support through the testing phase to ensure a thorough review.
Deployment advisory – how to ensure the solution is ultimately rolled out effectively.

This is just a selection of functions that our technical assurance team offers. Our expertise here is a combination of technical capability and project management methodologies – the result of which helps to uncover any blind spots the business may have, or patterns that could be leading towards project failure.

Technical Assurance isn’t just a matter of reviewing existing work; it’s helping teams proceed with the right tools and approaches that will deliver better results. This is most effectively done when we’re involved from the very beginning.

External assurance gives an objective eye across a technology initiative, with the added benefit of those QA professionals having seen many similar projects before; the learnings of which can be applied. It can be hard to maintain complete 360 visibility of all gaps or risks a project may be demonstrating from inside the business. Technical QA can help act as a fine-tooth comb without the distractions of internal dynamics or distractions.

And beyond the benefits of conducting assurance on a technology project, are the risks. With poor project methodology and assurance, issues can grow and knock the initiative off its axis – or fail entirely. Risks may include:

Security vulnerabilities within the code of a solution.
Missing key user feedback.
Blowing budgets out through misaligned requirements and resource planning.
Incompatible systems, APIs or business processes with the project solution.
A poor deployment process that results in user rejection.

We’ve listed 5 here, but there’s literally dozens of things that can negatively impact an IT project without careful governance and assurance in place. And these risks aren’t so much present due to any one person’s professional deficiencies; but more the broader organisational approach to project management and development.

Relationship Between Programmes and Projects IQANZ

Pre-empting technical quality assurance with good communications

Technical Assurance to the uninitiated can perhaps sound like a somewhat obscure discipline – a risk in itself when being subsequently deprioritised or left out of an IT project altogether, with the belief that internal QA and testing is sufficient. Even if a project manager or leader in the business sees the value of technical QA and successfully brings this function onto a project, there’s still major obstacles in the way if this initiative has not been communicated to the rest of the stakeholders and delivery team. As with many elements of a project, giving everyone plenty of time and information about technical QA rarely is wasted. Bringing everyone along on the journey together pays serious dividends later down the road – particularly come testing and deployment time where the end users are heavily involved in enabling a successful roll out.

Tailoring the communication style

Good communication might differ depending on the audience. For those who’ll come into contact with us regularly throughout the QA process, it’s worth giving the team a good briefing in person well before QA starts. For stakeholders who may or may not be impacted by the outcomes of our QA work, comms may be satisfactorily delivered as an email update. This will depend on the optimal communication methods for your business. You may also want to involve key people in the process before officially starting quality assurance – including talking to the potential provider (like IQANZ) to learn more about what technical assurance is, and how it will look if undertaken. This can go a long way to dispel any concerns about the purpose of QA professionals engaging with a project.

Bringing project management along with the process

Technical quality assurance should, if working properly, be viewed by everyone as a positive, reassuring safety measure that helps protect the delivery against big risks. In order to maintain this perspective, it’s important for the organisation to directly involve project delivery management personnel in the QA engagement from the start. Once a PM has worked alongside IQANZ, we find many situations where they will be the ones to drive decisions to engage us in the future. That’s because our technical assurance works around and with the project team, not against it.

Ensure the business is willing to make changes to its project practices

A critical ingredient in the success of quality assurance lies in the receiving organisation’s ability to receive guidance and influence change in the business. While a QA provider like IQANZ can provide a number of keys to unlock the success of a project, the business has to be willing to walk through the door. Making changes isn’t always comfortable in the short term, but can be made much easier with careful planning and clear direction. If the business has struggled with change in the past, there may need to be some work done on governance frameworks first; this is something that IQANZ can support you with.

Make people available to help a QA partner get the right information

As a quality assurance process runs parallel with a project, there will be frequent interactions between us and your team. To make sure we can add the most value, we’ll depend on your people being available to discuss the project, specific technical detail and other business requirements (i.e. via stakeholders). Our team is experienced in seamlessly integrating with your team, including attending group meetings. There will be moments however where we’ll benefit from speaking directly to certain individuals to understand the areas a project needs to address at any given time.

Ensure reporting is as up to date as possible

At IQANZ, we’re advocates of good governance around project and programme delivery. This extends to the reporting that takes place at every level. Reporting, distilled down to its simplest form, is the art of informing the right person about the things that matter most. As you engage with technical assurance, our team will look for reporting that helps build a picture of where things are at – and potential issues that exist. If reporting doesn’t exist to the degree required, part of our job will be to help support implementation of better reporting practices first.

Gather stakeholder feedback to help the assurance process

Ideally technical QA will be engaged on your project from the start; this allows us to front-foot certain risks and recommend improvements, as well as build long term relationships across the organisation. But we understand that in many scenarios, QA is brought in partway through. If this is the case, our team may get up to speed quicker with some existing stakeholder feedback or collated information about the challenges facing the project. If your project governance has captured this information, we’ll want to have this from the start.

QA is a friend of project teams

Quality assurance is a wonderful resource for projects and programmes to have. For a development project, technical assurance is another layer of protection against problems that may otherwise occur. Once we start working with project teams, we quickly build fruitful relationships and establish trust in both directions. This can be helped even more so if decision makers contextualise the role of QA accurately to their teams before it begins. As a quality assurance provider, our work puts us in direct contact with senior leaders and stakeholders across the business, project managers, their delivery teams and even the end user or customer. It’s important that all of your people understand that assurance is a valuable tool for them; not an ‘audit’ as so many misinterpret QA as. Our team is made up of people who’ve worked in the industry for many years; quickly our clients’ team realise we’re their advocates and support their work – not teachers marking their homework!

Need guidance on your IT project?

IQANZ provides specialist assurance services for technology projects across the private and public sectors. We apply proven assurance methodologies along with a high level of technical expertise to help guide projects and programmes to success. If you’re interested in getting independent, expert help on your technology project, get in touch with our team.