Keynote | Moving the Enterprise Forward Through Quality
Theresa Lanowitz | October 02, 2007

Abstract
We are at the edge of a precipice. The quality organization is crucial to successfully navigating the precipice and establishing a harmonic and symbiotic alignment with the line of business, other parts of the traditional IT organization, and the oft forgotten systems organization. All of these constituents play a vital role in enhancing the business. The business must be ready and equipped to leverage technology on a daily business to deliver a competitive advantage. The traditional IT organization and systems groups must focus on enabling the business to deliver more insight to the business. Throughout all of this change, the Quality Assurance organization must transform itself as well. The transformation of the Quality Assurance organization must focus on providing more strategic benefit throughout the lifecycle. As this shift occurs in the enterprise, how will new problems and solutions, both technological and business manifest themselves?

The Quality Assurance organization of the 21st century must be multi-faceted and ready to conquer:

  • Skills modernization and the transformation of new roles – a new era of IT is dawning. IT organizations must be ready with the appropriate organization and skills to deliver more strategic value to the line of business.
  • The Quality Assurance organization is pivotal to the success of the modern IT organization. What are the emerging roles of the new Quality Assurance organization?
  • Outsourcing and offshore virtual teams – making the decision to send work offshore is no longer driven solely by economics. Issues such as language, culture, time zones, and maturity levels must be considered.
  • Security at the application level – while application security is a real threat, what are the steps that must be taken throughout the application lifecycle to minimize the existence of security vulnerabilities?
  • Collaboration across boundaries – the enterprise is no longer isolated. Today’s businesses work with suppliers and partners in a global infrastructure. Collaboration eases the task of working outside the boundaries of an organization. Will collaboration grow in popularity within the enterprise, if so how do we minimize the risks?
  • Virtualization – this technology is real and is rapidly being adopted to save resources throughout the lifecycle.
  • Application complexity including services – translates to more loosely coupled applications. And, more loosely coupled applications mean greater risk for failure. How can the Quality Assurance organization minimize the risk of more complex applications?
  • Device and system software and its intersection with IT applications – device software is no longer rogue in the IT environment. Traditional IT organizations must embrace the wealth of data and the convergence of device and IT software.

This transformation of the Quality Assurance organization will drive the evolution of the Application Lifecycle Ecosystem, including: software vendors, boutique service providers, and traditional off-shore providers.

This keynote presentation will focus on the changes every Quality Assurance organization is experi-encing and how to manage the transition and expectations to become a model organization for the 21st century.