Dr. Tafline Ramos
In considering the question of “where software quality is heading in the future,” it is valuable to reflect on how Quality Engineering was described in the past versus how it is perceived in the present, to ensure we choose the best path forward for the future.
Quality Engineering is not a new concept and there are many techniques and practices that we can use from the past that will not only uplift the quality of the systems we test, but that will also uplift our own marketability and value to our teams, our organizations and our industry.
Our industry is coming full circle – we started out mid- to late-last century utilizing Quality Engineering practices that built quality into each product. Then, at around the turn of the century, testing was split off as a separate profession, primarily to address the growing need to assure quality that the Y2K bug brought us.
We are now coming full circle to realize that while this separation of roles and duties clearly led to the recognition of the importance of Quality Assurance and Testing in the software development lifecycle, it also positioned us (or stuck us!) at the very end of that lifecycle, leaving us with very little influence on how quality is built into each system. This has resulted in costly system failures and failed projects that could arguably have been prevented if the risks and potential impacts of not building quality were realized sooner.
In this talk, Tafline will discuss Quality Engineering practices of the past and present, reflecting on what’s been missing recently from our profession and looking at how Testers can transform themselves into Quality Engineers, adding greater value to their organizations, their careers and their profession.
Dr. Tafline Ramos, 2020, Keynote
