The document discusses the transition from traditional QA to digital assurance. It notes that digital transformation is happening now due to trends like rising customer expectations, the importance of mobile, and the volume of data. Traditional QA is becoming more predictive, integrated with development and operations, automated, and focused on strategies and solutions rather than just tools. The key aspects of digital assurance are guarding customer experience, lifecycle automation through continuous delivery, and using quality intelligence. Tips for survival include focusing on customer experience, lifecycle automation, and quality intelligence.
12. Key findings
● Today’s customer experience is omnichannel
● Rising customer expectations shape digital
priorities
● Mobile is no longer a trend: it’s a requirement
● Drowning in data
21. Traditional vs Modern QA
Reactive05 Predictive defect analysis
Dev -> Test -> Ops04 Dev/QA/Ops synergy
Test automation03 Continuous integration
Guardian for functionality,
performance, security02
Strategy-focused as opposed to
tool-focused
App-level testing01
Platforms and solutions, driving
better business outcome
Let’s face it: digital transformation is ongoing and is rapidly accelerating right now. We’re in the middle of that phenomena!
Customers now do have a handfull of touchpoints when dealing with our solution. They can be complimentary or exchangable, but regardless they should offer seamless experience.
Now one of the companies that is researching digital transformation is a well known Adobe. Following are two slides with an abstract from their DT2018 survey towards travel industry. only 10% of the customers are using single product/solution for their challenge: booking vacation.
And what is even more interesting is the source of knowledge: pay attention to 7% social media share among available/used information channels. It’s a digital world we live in.
Summarizing key findings in Adobe report1. Today’s travel brands must cope with a proliferating range of customer interaction touch points, both offline and online, nearly all of which are linked back to digital systems.
2. The world-class customer experiences offered by digital leaders like Amazon, Google and Airbnb are setting a high bar for customer expectations.
3. Two-thirds of respondents said mobile devices now make up 20% or more of their website traffic
4. And because of massive amount of devices and communication sent back and forth we are dealing with a massive amount of data!
Now that’s a background of the current situation. Let’s think what might happen in future as digital transformation is not a single-time event but rather ongoing process…
321 million as a number of google hits when searching for digital transformation...
219 billion dollars is a projected revenue for U.S. travel marked in 2021 but…
...what is even more interesting is that 50% of this revenue will be generated through mobile channels!
Now knowing that DT is present now and will be present for a while in future consider how you find yourself, your organisation and - most important of all - a role of QA specialist in this transforming reality. Can we stay passive?
NO WE CAN’T! We need to act and adapt!
Now the key to find yourself in this situation is to understand how digital transformation goes through several stages. Adobe when surveying travel industry proposed the following process:
Experiential? Do they offer truly unique, seamless, and cross-channel digital experiences that leave lasting impressions on my customers?
Personal? Does their business tailor digital experience and marketing messages to each customer?
Automated? Do they have the integrated front and back-end systems that will lead to return-on-investment from technology spending?
Ready? Do they have the time, money and talent to deliver on digital objectives?
And the answer to cope with that - assuming the industry you are working with is considering itself digital - is to design solutions that are crafted and fitted. The following three are becoming more and more popular.
To be able to use these three solutions the approach towards QA was and is still transforming as well. We went from so called traditional QA towards modern QA replacing what you see on the left with things on the right.
But’s lets go forward even more: welcome to Digital Assurance!
Digital Assurance is based on five pillars, representing how we shall adjust our approach towards quality:
1. No longer testing products or services, but rather assuring that value chain stays consistent throughout the enitre process
2. No longer being guarding of quality but rather guardian of the brand itself and customer experience
3. No longer test automation but rather lifecycle automation: applying tools for process automation, repeatable tasks or the ones impossible/slower to do manually
4. No longer continuous integration but rather continuous delivery (even dozen or thousand of times per day!)
5. Quality intelligence as a must: deep dives, predictive analysis and basing decisions on real-time data.
So what shall we consider tryin to be Digital Transformation Advisor?
In terms of customer experience here are the possible topics to be researched / exhausted. Compare that to your daily duties - are these the things you are focused on with your digital solution?
In terms of lifecycle automation going more towards virtual, easy to setup, customizable infrastructure. Using codeless automation might be a way to go as well. And bare in mind frequent deployment.
And last but not least in terms of researching data a few things to consider…
So. What would it be to make #10yearschallende in 10years from now? What would our QA world be in 2029?
will you be testing products? will you be testing services?
...or maybe you will be testing customer experience? And making sure that it goes flawlessly throughout the process? Think about it and share your thoughts!