Wednesday, 26 May 2021
On February 4, we partnered with the Business Transformation Network (BTN) to deliver an exclusive virtual roundtable with senior technology leaders. Now, we're launching a video series to explore some of the topics we discussed in more detail.
Stuart Makin (Head of QA and Test at O2 (Telefonica UK))
Part 1
Part 2
The BTN, in partnership with Prolifics Testing, brings together some of the leading testing and quality assurance professionals across industry to go further into depth the role of testing within successful digital transformations.
The 2019-20 World Quality Report found that when they asked business leaders to rate factors in terms of the impact made on increasing the company QA and testing budget, ‘Increased amount of developments and releases’ rated the highest. Clearly, the highly iterative nature of these new DevOps and agile methodologies is both a blessing and a curse: on one hand, the software can be changed more easily and more quickly, but on the other, these changes bring increased scope for creating defects, putting more and more pressure on the testing team.
The third episode in this series showcases Stuart Makin, Head of QA and Test at O2 Telefonica UK. He is accountable for a team of permanent O2 test professionals, and a QA & Test Managed Service partnership.
In Part 1, Stuart looks at the importance of ensuring that quality sits at the heart of everything that they do at O2 but the accountability isn’t set solely on the QA team. He also talks on the focus on data-driven service improvement plans so they get quality right upfront.
Stuart then scrutinises the role of offshoring within O2 and how the pandemic has accelerated not just how they worked but how they thought differently.
Accessibility of their testing plans was challenged but technology enablement allowed them to pivot in the way they worked. Stuart also looks at the role of culture across their dispersed teams.
In Part 2, Stuart looks at the evolution of their processes and how O2 has increased the speed of their delivery, whilst ensuring quality is not hampered. Quality at speed and quality at demand needed to be working in tandem. Stuart then looks at how they can develop workstreams to deliver a better experience for their customers and the benefits of automation.
O2's focus on the use of automation to create faster and more efficient deliveries, helped them to predict a risk-based approach.
Stuart highlights the benefits they are seeing from utilising an Agile methodology versus Waterfall and the benefits of testing things in a completely different style.
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