World Quality Report 2022-2023: Orchestrating quality in agile enterprises

In this year’s World Quality Report, we see quality in the agile and DevOps environment viewed like an orchestra. Every element of the software development process comes together in harmony to complete the finished piece, like a perfect musical performance where quality is assured.

This is referred to as quality orchestration whereby the teams, skillsets, provisioning, automation practices, service virtualization, and more are viewed – and managed – as a seamless end-to-end whole. Collaboration in this orchestrated agile environment is key. It’s how test and quality engineers ensure their activities deliver the two most important quality objectives for the agile enterprise: excellent customer experience and business outcomes.

Our latest World Quality Report survey found that agile and DevOps were delivering benefit in line with these two objectives at many levels. For example, when asked if they had seen ‘significant’ improvements (i.e., more than 20%) since adopting agile and DevOps, 64% of the survey respondents said they had seen improvement in the area of on-time delivery, 63% in predictability, 62% in reducing the cost of their quality activities, and 61% in customer experience.

Agile adoption continues to grow

This chapter of the WQR also assesses the evolution of agile and DevOps and the tools/approaches used to assure quality. For example, we discover that although the agile implementation of packaged enterprise systems has been slow to take off, with waterfall being the predominant methodology for many years, agile adoption has started to grow. Indeed, 59% of the survey respondents now have a well-implemented agile methodology for quality and testing. Quality is being further assured by a number of different approaches, such as pre-built test case repositories for certifying sprints, which has been adopted by 63% of the survey respondents.

When it comes to enterprise systems, testing isn’t always carried out by quality engineers. Some 62% of surveyed organizations say it is carried out by business SMEs. Nonetheless the skills of quality engineers remain integral to agile teams with 32% of organizations saying quality engineers make up between 26% to 35% of their agile teams, and 28% of organizations saying their agile teams comprise even more quality engineers at between 36% to 45% of the team make-up.

Recommendations for success

As quality orchestration increases within the software development lifecycle (SDLC), the WQR looks ahead to possible future developments, such as a need for much higher levels of automation and quality as the pace of continuous quality grows. It also makes several recommendations for ensuring agile and DevOps success across the SDLC, such as making quality engineers integral to agile development programs, and blending both technical and business skills within the broader quality engineering skillset.

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If you’d like to hear more about our findings relating to quality orchestration in agile and DevOps, please get in touch with: