Have you ever been asked if you can achieve zero bugs in a product? A younger me would have laughed and said it’s not possible, but not all projects are the same. We once worked on a military project where budgeting is on another level and where there was no expense spared starting from documentation and planning (both under heavy testing and monitoring). Or you might be dealing with the medical industry, where a bug doesn’t mean an angry customer but the difference between life and death.

It is always crucial to test new functionality as soon as possible to make sure it does not have a negative impact on the existing features. Our experience has shown that continuous integration is a viable approach when developing complex embedded systems. It usually means that you must invest effort in developing an integrated Automated Build System (ABS) and an Automated Testing System (ATS), but it also results in less effort required for testing and bug fixing. This approach enabled us to create high quality and reliable solutions.

I’m just on my way from Berlin, where I had the privilege to give a keynote speech at the Wocomoco conference. Wocomoco – as it can be seen by its name – is not just a usual conference on mobility services, but really tries to bring new, innovative and different perspectives to the table from around the globe – many great speakers and ideas, lots of great discussions, and an excellent opportunity for me to reflect.

We live in a world where time is money. The world of IT is no exception to this and it might even be said that it is setting the standard for the saying. To get as much return on your investment as possible, you want a product that is solid so it will need as little bug fixing as possible. Fixing a bug takes manpower and that costs money.

In the agile approach test engineers will be working as a part of their scrum teams and they can easily become isolated from other test community. What to do? Build your QA Guild!