Jul. 22, '10
by Rob Scott
Don't buy umbrellas, test your product

In 1999, the U.K. Passport Agency implemented a new Siemens computer system, which failed to issue passwords on time for a half million British citizens. The Agency ended up spending £12.6m to try and fix the mess, including £16,000 for umbrellas for the long lines of people outside the building waiting for a passport.
Quality assurance (QA) is easy to forget or underestimate when a project is low priority or quickly approaching a deadline, but missing this step will almost inevitably cost more in the long run. Had the Agency spent more time testing the new system, and not pushed it live so quickly, millions could have been saved. Though you may never have to buy umbrellas to solve problems caused by inadequate testing, you’ll likely incur serious costs if QA is underestimated.
At Brighten we’ve found that, depending on the project type, it is wise to devote up to a quarter of total project time on QA. Although this may seem like a sizable chunk of time, it keeps us from spending that time in the future, and allows us to deliver quality initially.
Over the next few weeks I’ll be writing about some of the key parts of QA for the web. I’ll share some of the techniques that we’ve found to be useful in our QA process, and some ways we’ve made our QA process more efficient. At this point I’m planning to cover these topics:
- Our recommended QA process
- Choosing who should do the testing
- How to test:
- Functionality
- Layout and design
- User experience.
Do you have any other questions about the QA process that you’d like answered? What kind of experiences have you had with QA (or the lack of it)? Let us know in the comments below.
References
- Photo of umbrella from // solidether on Flickr
- BBC News: Holidaymakers may foot bill for passport chaos



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