Testing Centre of Excellence, Myth or Reality
Writing by AppLabs on Thursday, 6 of August, 2009 at 9:29 am
A Testing Centre of Excellence (TCoE) is a framework which is needed because of the increased business user demand and complex changes. It helps to multiple releases in a year and provides dynamic business changes. Every project having its own testing process becomes people dependant and not process dependant, hence affecting the uniformity of testing process, hence the need for a Testing Centre of Excellence. Reverse to it there are certain myths that hover around the reality, the myths say that testing is a time consuming process due to inadequate automation & usage of tools and lack of key accelerators / frameworks. Added to it is the statement that, due to lack of measurement/metric testing remains ineffective. As said, these are myths. A proper implementation of the process can gain you a significant RoI.
The four pillars on which a TCoE is built are, Process Improvement, Expertise building, Project Support and Knowledge Management. When building a TCoE define a strategy, build a roadmap, assimilate ideas and best practices, deploy using capabilities and components, and improve by refining the components.
For a successful implementation of a TCoE, define key objectives and its scope, the key issues and the priorities the TCoE aims to solve. Create an engagement model with the other department and project teams. The TCoE must set rules around how and when it will provide services to the project teams. Clearly define the entry and exit criteria of its operation. Define the quantifiable benefits. For many enterprises, TCoE remains a model without powers of enforcement because they do not have a mechanism to understand the ROI of implementing a COE strategy, hence budget it accordingly, chargeback or direct from business budget.
Category: Industry
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