Guiding Principle - Defects found earlier in the development cycle are less expensive to find and fix.

Software defects cost 5x more to find and fix in the next phase. For example, if a design defect "leaks" through to the coding phase, the coder spent time coding it and performing unit tests, only to find out during integration that it was designed wrong. This "leaking" defect created unplanned rework. The work that was performed is thrown away and a new design is needed, code is written and then it's unit tested -- all unplanned rework. That's why we provide a full life-cycle software testing approach that tests (and inspects) all work products developed throughout the software development / deployment lifecycle.

Our testing method is unique because we predict how many defects need to be found in the system to ensure a good customer experience. We have complex prediction algorithms that depend on our ever-growing database of software projects. Our testers have a goal to find a specific number of defects. This is a critical difference than other test organizations, because their goal is to run test cases and most of their test cycles are fixed at "x" weeks. What happens if you get to the "x'th" week, and there are still 200 defects that have yet to be found? Most organizations don't even know that and they simply release the product. What we have learned in our years of testing is that the tester's job is to find defects and it takes unique effort to find each defects. Running test cases are a means to the end. They are not the end objective. What we really need them to do is find the bugs. By predicting the total remaining defects, charting it, and reporting on it daily, our testers are much more focused and efficient than other test organizations.

Test Planning - Our testing methodology is a very well managed process. We know how long it takes to build a test case, we know how many test cases it takes to find a defect, we know how many test cases are needed to effectively test the system, and we know how long our testers take to write and execute test cases. Therefore, we build very realisitic test plans. Because we gather this data across all of our projects, we can quickly and accurately build a test plan that will meet your schedule and quality expectations.

Test Targeting - As part of our test planning process, we utilize our test targeting strategy and tools to highlight the riskiest areas of the system (e.g. high complexity, critical business functions, highly stressed functions.) Targeting is critical as 80% of the defects are in this high-risk code. Testing follows the law of diminishing returns, so the key to our teams' effectiveness is providing full requirements-based testing while thoroughly exercising all aspects of these high-risk areas.

Inspections - Our full lifecycle approach means that we inspect every work product. We leverage our industry benchmarks, as well as our IEEE, Software Engineering Institute (SEI), American Society of Quality (ASQ), and Project Management Institute (PMI) relationships and knowledge to train our testers on world-class inspection techniques. We know the benchmark data for how many defects we should expect in each document, and based upon a client's past performance (and other industry metrics), we predict how many defects we are expecting to find. Then, we track the number of defects we find, and report our findings. Again, having historical data from hundreds of inspections helps us set realisitic quality and management expectations and keeps our teams goal-oriented and focused.