Quality Management Thought Leadership

Quality Management Thought Leadership Whitepaper Series

Game on: Quality software delivery as a strategic business competency.

This quality management thought leadership series explores enduring software quality delivery and its challenges and opportunities in today’s marketplace through the three primary concepts that IBM Rational is working into its quality management solutions:

Collaborate to mitigate business risk and increase customer satisfaction
Automate proven delivery processes to lower the cost of software and improve return on investment
Analyze and report with accurate, reliable, timely metrics for informed business decisions.

Business and technology leaders face growing pressures to deliver high-quality software that aligns with business outcomes. Market conditions are mandating faster time to market, innovative and agile thinking, use of new technologies, adherence to compliance mandates, and through cost cutting measures, doing “more with less.” Outcomes are measured in dollars, in customer retention, and in market share. When software doesn’t get to market as planned, fails or doesn’t perform, an organization lets down its customers, stakeholders, employees and ultimately their own brand.

Read on to learn more about the ways in which Rational is working to help you achieve greater value and performance at less cost from your investments in software.

Listen to a podcast by Mike Lundblad, Program Manager, Rational Software Quality and Requirements Management, where he summarizes this series and discusses in more detail the essential elements of the “When am I done testing?” paper available for download below.

Thought Leadership Series Details & Downloads

Series Theme – “Software quality optimization: balancing business transformation and risk"
Co-authors Moshe Cohen and Michael Lundblad examine the delicate balance in managing business transformation versus risk, why the paradigm shift is occurring and how best-in-class clients of IBM are stepping out in front to face and overachieve in software time-to-market, cost reduction and improved software quality. Register and download "Software quality optimization: balancing business transformation and risk" now.

Report/Governance – "When am I done testing?"
A rough estimate puts the costs of software-related downtime at about $300 billion annually (CHAOS Chronicles v12.3.9, June 30, 2008). An IBM Industry standard study suggests 80% of development costs are spent identifying and correcting defects of which the cost to fix increases exponentially as software moves from requirements, design and quality assurance to deployment.

Authors Murray Cantor, Michael Lundblad, Avik Sinha and Clay Williams provide an innovative framework for answering the questions: Is it wise to continue spending money on software quality assurance?” , “Will further testing cost more than it is worth?” , “Is the software ready for release?”, How do we know when we’re done testing?” and is a new barometer for measuring the business risk of release versus the cost of continuing testing. Register and download “When am I done testing?” now

Automate - "The automation evolution. An analysis of the evolution of automation in software quality management"
As software has transformed from stand-alone applications to a ubiquitous and essential element of the products and systems that power our everyday lives, there’s a greater need to ensure application quality. This need supports why quality management automation has continued to grow in functionality and adoption since its introduction in the early 1990s. Inthis paper, Brian Bryson examines the benefits of quality management automation, the progression of its adoption and future opportunities for expanding it. Register and download "The automation evolution. An analysis of the evolution of automation in software quality management" now.

Collaborate – “Differentiation through collaboration: Lowering the cost of delivery and time to market with requirements driven quality” (planned publish date: Fall 2009)
Explores the need to think and act collaboratively across the software delivery lifecycle – the only way to improve quality in less time.