Dave Sudworth
Marketing Director, KnowledgeCore
1. How long have you been working in the IT industry?I have over 20 years experience in the IT industry, primarily in marketing roles for testing and technology companies working in the software and the hardware markets. Before coming to Knowledge Core, I ran my own marketing services company for technology clients.
Knowledge Core has been around since 2005, although the tool has been in development since 1999.
2. What advantages has partnering with AppLabs given Knowledge Core in delivering its services or creating a value added proposition?
The partnership with AppLabs has meant that we have access to quality people to help with the implementation of our solutions. The partnership has given us the opportunity to speak about quality with authority and demonstrates that we can implement quality delivery. Knowledge Core is a relatively small company, so the AppLabs partnership helps us to bolster our numbers and together, we can deliver more than we could do alone.
3. Do you think organizations give quality management and testing a significant enough role when implementing an IT project?
In a word, no. This is usually because testing is left until the end of the project, right before go live. When defects are found, they are usually discovered at too late a stage, when they will be far more costly to rectify. By this time, teams will be running low on time and budget, so they won’t necessarily invest the requisite resources into testing. Testing needs to be involved right at the requirements stage. The situation in Service Orientated Architecture environments is even worse, simply because the nature of testing in SOA is far more complex. If an SOA entity failed due to inherent defects, the cost to the business would be significant. Companies have to be aware that they need to deploy testing and quality assurance right from the start.
4. What do you think is the hottest issue in the technology industry at the moment that will impact the way organizations approach quality management and testing?
SOA is definitely one of the hottest issues at the moment and everyone is talking about it. It will have a huge impact on how companies approach testing and quality management because SOA makes software quality more important and more difficult to achieve – traditional approaches to testing are insufficient in an SOA implementation.
IT governance and compliance are also hot topics, particularly in the financial sector. Governance demands better quality, increased reporting and a bigger time investment. Both SOA and IT governance have an impact on the business strategy, so the solidity of the IT based deliverables is imperative.
5. How do you think this particular industry will look in the next five years? What would you like to see happen in that time?
I think that there will be increasing pressure to reduce costs, yet deliver more. This will put a higher level of stress on IT departments and how they deliver. When businesses innovate and move forward, 99.9% of the time technology is involved somewhere along the line. Look at how business was 30 years ago – technological innovation was at its embryonic stages and things like email, PDAs and lap tops were unthinkable. The fact that there is an increasing reliance on technology and technological developments happen faster and faster, mean that companies are under pressure to keep up. They want to take advantage of new technology but they need to prove the value of it to the business.
6. What is your mantra/golden rule that would define your thoughts on the importance of implementing a problem free IT project?
Quality matters, but you need to know exactly how a project is delivered. You need metrics. You need to know how to measure it. It is important that the people who are valuable to the project are free to do the job that matters and not spend huge amounts of time making out-of-date reports. For example, using a testing specialist to effectively manage and run the quality programme will ensure the team has the time and the resources to focus on their core responsibilities. Real time delivery of quality is vital and ensures that the project runs along smoothly.
What our clients say
"AppLabs' support and ability to respond flexibly to our demands has ensured that our very busy and productive IT Department can in turn, respond to the requirements placed upon it by our business, in a fast and cost effective manner."
Clive Williams
Head of Development, Intelligent Finance