Circular Development

For those lucky to have a production pipeline, the standard flow is something on the order of:

• Customer Demand
• Sales/Marketing Proposal
• Engineering Specification
• Execution
• Quality Assurance (Staging)
• Release
• Customer Response / Use

There are of course some retrograde cycles, and "Execution" can be shorthand for all sorts of subcycles, especially if unit testing or integration issues are evicent. But consider this tree from the position of the QA people. They are isolated from the initial demand by three layers of diverse teams -- at least! This is the "telephone" model of management. They are typically at a loss as to the proper, desired functionality of the appliction. Engineering specifications are often incomplete, and much negotiation between these layers is oral and is itself flawed and ittermittent.

Outside of the customer themselves, the people in the best position to understand the expected result are the initial sales and marketing people that launched the process internally. Putting them in charge of QA closes the internal loop and reduces the telephone effect. They may not be qualified to engineer solutions, but they know how to use the product and can detect errant and misinformed behavior. They are also the first people to recieve hostile feedback from clients, and so are highly motivated to ensure product fidelity. Because of this, they have the best perspective on whether a release is solid, or should occur at all, unlike the engineering team who is at times more motivated to "clear their plate" and move on to the next issue.