In Financial Services the race is on to do it fast and do it first

One year on from the Lehman Brothers collapse, the financial services landscape has been significantly reshaped. Markets remain unrelentingly competitive. And in the battle for competitive success, the prize goes to the business able to get to market faster than anyone else. How quickly can a new and innovative business service be launched, scaled up and brought to full profitability?

“Contemporary testing practice is integral to the work of today's project teams, designed to help rather than hinder”
-Dr. Richard Sykes

Gaining this early mover advantage by mobilising IT resources to deliver a new and innovative business capability demands effective software testing. Best contemporary testing practices lie at the heart of the professional creation and delivery of new software structures. Properly integrated into project management processes, they enable the project team to cut through any testing bottlenecks to reduce software development lifecycle costs and timescales. 

One lesson stands out: effective risk management is a critical differentiator. And first and foremost, best contemporary software testing practices are about project risk management – ensuring that the new service will deliver the intended outcomes when it goes live.

In addition testing maintains a focus on the effectiveness of the project team preventing problems rather than detecting them for a later fix, keeping the team away from resource-wasting detours. And it maintains a focus on the efficiency of the project team, ensuring that it works its resource highly productively – but only on work that is genuinely in the project value chain.

This leaves you confidently in control of all your resources at all times, focusing on achieving the desired objective, wasting nothing on unnecessary detours.

Because, in the words of the great Peter Drucker, 'there is nothing as useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done in the first place'.

And the fastest project teams test!

Contemporary testing practice is integral to the work of today's project teams, designed to help rather than hinder. It will flex with the process and deliver even when there is fast moving business-required re-specification of objectives – it recognises the need for both speed and the agility demanded by a fast changing competitive landscape.

No longer the interfering back office audit or naysayer, world class testing practices are now positioned as the front-line trusted advisor, enabling 'go live' decisions to be made with true confidence.

Software testing has developed as a profession in its own right. Qualifications have evolved to provide a sure foundation for practitioners, led by the ISTQB (International Software Testing Qualifications Board). Internationally recognised standards, such as BS79525, provide excellent process models. A growing diversity of specialist tools is on offer, marked by a focus on fast and effective reporting. The most important development has been in the arena of test maturity models. The new TMMi model (www.tmmifoundation.org) is structured to parallel the CMMi '5 levels of maturity' that has done so much to bring the quality revolution into the heart of software creation.

Steria Team appoints a World Class Coach

Steria has always put effective testing at the heart of its software project teams, with specialist resource based in its Indian operations. It has recently announced a new partnership with Experimentus, a leader in contemporary testing best practice.

"Steria recognises that financial services companies live or die by how quickly and cost effectively they can roll out innovative business capabilities with tight risk management," says Yvonne Spalding, Managing Director, Steria Financial Services. "Our partnership with Experimentus brings the best of contemporary software testing practices to the heart of our client operations as one key element of our commitment to their success."  

This is affirmed by Geoff Thompson, Consultancy Director at Experimentus. "Testing is a vital component of software development process – and contemporary testing best practice is about professional delivery of speed, agility and risk management to the sinews of that process."

So take a fresh look at testing. It delivers effective risk management, business reassurance, speed to market and that much needed board confidence.     

As Director, Services for Bloor Research, Dr Richard Sykes is an advisor in the strategic transformation of technology & business process sourcing, outsourcing and offshoring business models. Group VP IT of chemical major ICI in the 1990's, he is an elected member of the Board of Intellect, the UK business association of the IT, Telecoms and Electronics industries.