Mark Bargh - Vice President

1. How long have you been working in the testing industry?

I have been working in the IT industry for 18 years, 14 of these have been in testing.

2. What are the biggest challenges facing the M&A market in regards to testing?

M&As occur in high profile, political environments. The ROI is significant if integration is completed on time with a high degree of quality. Generally, the program and project management on such projects is first class and as such the pressure is on testing to deliver to defined timescales and to report accurately on progress and quality metrics.

Apart from the above, several of the specific testing challenges are around the increased complexity of the test systems required, definition of the target IT environments, assumptions about business process definition, lack of documentation and of course, change management.

3. What lessons have you learnt through your experience of testing within the M&A market?

• Be prepared for a tough ride, wear your Kevlar suit and don’t assume anything. At the end of the day, people may well lose their jobs on the back of an M&A so expect politics
• Get your reporting and metrics right, as visibility of progress stats may well go to board level
• Good test analysis skills are key, as documentation of old systems may not exist. Assumptions will be made that business process between organizations are the same, but they will differ and this will confuse business users
• Environments will be large and complex so insist on solid configuration and release management strategies

4. What do you think is the hottest issue in testing at the moment?

The biggest challenge for testing is keeping up with the pace of IT change. Time to market is increasing and visibility of failure is massive. Traditional testing models need revising to keep pace with the speed of change.

5. How do you think the testing industry will look in five years time?

The last five years has seen the testing market mature, with testing becoming a recognized discipline within the IT sector. Analyst projections show that the percentage growth in testing services will out perform the percentage growth in IT as a whole. More companies are turning to specialist independent testing organizations such as AppLabs for their testing needs. Such organizations will further develop and become more dominant players in the testing field. The testing industry itself will have to evolve to cater for advancements in technology. We will need to be adaptable and flexible to new developments.