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 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.

Umesh Shukla is the Manager, Product Engineering, Symphony Services. He leads product verification and validation services for specific customers, which includes Product Quality Assessment, ensuring products are as per the desired quality, reduction in time to market. Drawing from his twelve years of product engineering experience. Umesh works closely with clients and Symphony teams to transform their QA operations to make it more efficient, is involved in delivery assurance and helps Symphony and its customers to enhance product quality. Umesh has worked with Reva Industries, Cad em Technologies, Aspect Development/12 Technologies and Sonata Software in different capacities. He has significant experience in successfully adopting, integrating and improving processes and teams from product engineering. Umesh holds an MS degree in Software systems from BITS Pilan, and a B.E degree in Mechanical Engineering from REC Slichar, Assam University.

Sunil Gupta is the VP, Product Quality, Service Line, Symphony Services. He is responsible for leading the company's product verification and validation services, which includes QA processes assessment and Product Quality Assessment to help companies achieve global market leadership. Drawing from his twenty three years of product and system engineering experience, Sunil works closely with clients to transform their QA operations from 'defect detection' to 'defect prevention' thus leading to reduction in time-to-market and enhancement of product quality to achieve market leadership. He also headed the QA practice at Aricent. He has significant experience in successfully integrating companies from BOTH the engineering and cultural perspective. Sunil is a trained ISO and CMMi Level S Assessor and had led Software Engineering Process Group (SEPG) for many years in previous organizations. Sunil holds a B-Tech degree in Computer Science from REC Trichy, Madras University.