Product companies expect certainty in terms of outcome for reduction in cost, reduced time and enhanced quality. Since priority and focus is on releasing new features to markets, quality takes a backset and become more of an afterthought. The result is increased risks in terms of unpredictable quality, cost and time, and thus fails to meet the desired outcomes. This phenomenon leads to high product cost, poor user experience and high maintenance cost resulting in not only in loss of brand image but loss of business at times.

What product companies need from QA function is to provide certainty around cost, time and quality in software testing to deliver expected business outcome for product companies in terms of assured lower cost of R&D, adequate quality and on time delivery of products to market. In the Outcome certainty model, the partner works with the customer to attain the outcome desired through mutually agreed SLAs, and commitments to align value systems of the partner and the customer organization. In this model, partners bring in processes, best practices and good blend of technology and domain to the programs to reduce and manage risks for the clients.

Client and partner agree to deliver the output to be produced through the program and associated value to be delivered by the partner. This results in risk and reward sharing between client and partner and thus foundation of
larger trust and sharing.

The author has over nine years of IT experience, including Project Management, People Management- Resource Planning, IT Auditing, Testing and Client interfacing. He has also received a Business English Certification of Vantage level from Cambridge University

Rahul has done prestigious IT certifications, including CSTE, CISA, PMP, and ITIL and has experience in managing in-house and onsite QA teams for optimized SQA efforts. Working on Financial, Business Intelligence and IT security software in different Product and Project based companies has provided him rich experience in varied domains across different geographies.

Rahul has had experience with building the QA team from scratch for various software applications to be developed and tested in India, and has been instrumental in interacting with international clients to decide and plan on work
to be off shored to India. He has successfully executed and delivered projects by leading cross-cultural teams for multiple software projects.