Leading a Testing Center of Excellence

As companies look to drive down the cost of quality, they often leap to the conclusion that centralizing QA into a Testing Center of Excellence (TCoE) will magically result in increased quality and lower costs—without understanding the path required to get there. Change requires defining mission and goals, and putting into place a plan to move forward. Equally important is the need to establish cost of quality metrics to shift the focus from the cost of testing to the cost of building quality applications. Susan Schanta shares her experience transitioning disparate teams to a centralized model and offers insights into how to create a cohesive TCoE team. For those managing onshore/offshore teams, she discusses how to adapt existing processes that work and eliminate those that don't. Susan provides tips to implement accountability for automation ROI, performance standards, and recommendations for program metrics that identify opportunities to decrease the cost of producing high quality software.