'Fix it' or 'Build it right'? How do we improve quality through collaboration and shared accountability?
The past few years have witnessed a considerable shift in IT management focus of financial organizations from cost optimization to improving the quality of the product or service. Reducing costs does not help in retaining market position if the products or services don't sell. The economy gets challenged as is, making it an extremely competitive environment, so it is no longer good enough to just identify and fix issues. Every defect before a release contributes to a delay in time to market and defects which slip through, reduce customer confidence in the quality of the product or service. As companies move from a defect detection to a defect prevention mindset, they have reaped the resulting benefits of shorter time to market, increased mitigation of business risks and compliance of IT systems to regulations. Improving upstream quality is therefore something IT leaders have on the top of their mind. Collaboration between different IT and business functions plays a key role in upstream quality, and also involves breaking away from some of the existing silos of software development.
