Spending Money to Ensure Quality, Essay Example

In a systems migration project for a well-known UK High Street Bank; we had to remove a large number of geographically dispersed systems to a specified central location.  As all of these were live operational systems, most of the relocation ‘lift and shift’ work was carried out overnight. This was an extremely complex procedure with limited time windows to complete specific tasks. System testing of each system was paramount before it went back into the live production environment. As each system was mirror imaged into the clients Disaster Recover (DR) site the QA was extremely heightened over the system testing procedures, well above normal QA expectations for an operation of this type. (Transition Support, 2011)

This change in emphasis on Quality Assurance (QA) procedures resulted in excessive man-hours devoted to the accuracy of system testing. Further, owing to the zero tolerance level, as no systems were allowed to be migrated to the DR site until it satisfied a 98% compliance score to the stipulated systems quality standards and metrics for the operational running, this resulted in an extreme low morale for the systems migration team tasked with the relocation of these systems. This over-engineering of quality standards was not detected in the due diligence of the Prime Contractor doing the systems migration for the Bank.  This resulted in an extensive counter-productive argument that resulted in the contractor having to sign-off on a massive overspend that had been incurred in order to achieve the over-engineered QA standards.

A somewhat unusual event for the Prime Contractor who had completed many other lift and shift operations for other Financial Services Companies.  Also an example of reading the small print in business contracts and not taking for granted that a client will permit you to handle matters in your own specific way. The Computer firm and the Bank had been strategic business partners for many years but this event seriously strained the previous good business relationship.

References

Transition Support. (2011, 12 4). Quality Assurance. Retrieved from Transition Support: http://www.transition-support.com/Quality_Assurance.htm