FROM BA TO BQA: INCREASING ROLE OF ANALYSTS IN IMPROVING PRODUCT QUALITY IN AGILE ENVIRONMENTS

Abstract

Quality Software is one of the most sought out commodity in the digital world. Different quality standards like GQM, FURPS, ISO 9126 etc. have been proposed over the years and are continued to be used by companies as per their quality requirements, quality goals, kind of products, services and development processes. While traditional development practices place responsibility of Quality goals with Quality Engineers, Testers etc. recently there has been an increase in talks of integrating Business Analysts (BAs) role in defining and validating quality requirements especially in Agile based software developments, so much so as to suggestions of creating a BQA (BA/QA) role; integrating functional responsibilities of two in a single role in Agile frameworks. Proponents of this philosophy backs BAs for this challenging role because of their familiarity with both business and technological needs of clients, as well as knowledge of in-house products and services. Using statistics from a global SAAS based company; this paper provides valuable insights that such roles have started to exist in our Industry with good effect while bringing a positive impact on product quality and ultimately increase in customer satisfaction.