Of cricket and throwing builds over the wall

One of the questions on the Quality Ready Assessment (QRA) asks about the interaction between development and testing teams. One of the possible answers is:

The teams do not interact. “New builds are thrown over the wall” when they are completed.

So I decided to ask the question, what percentage of those companies ship on time and on budget? I even gave them some wiggle room since sometimes even the best-laid plans don’t work out. All I was looking for shipping on-time greater than 75% of the time. What did I find?

11.76% could ship on schedule and not over cost.

Ouch.

Wait, I’m sure that this is only like one or two companies that have taken the QRA. Let’s go see how many do this throw over the wall business…

15.86% (!)

Aye carmaba! To put that in perspective that is one out of every six companies.

I spend an obnoxious amount of time in the application lifecycle and quality worlds. I also have been very lucky in that every company I’ve ever worked for has had mixed teams of developers and testers. To me the concept of throwing a build over a wall is as foreign as the game of cricket.

(Have you ever tried to follow cricket? I was working in London once and I desperately tried to figure it out. I even had one of the British guys walk me through it as slowly as humanly possible. I think I lost all higher brain processing ability when he explained that some cricket games can last up to five days.)

Judging by those shipping numbers I’m glad the experience is foreign to me and I really feel for those poor souls that are stuck in that situation. I suppose if anyhing the QRA provides some pretty tangable data that that is not the optimal way of doing things.

Kind of like if you are the batsman trying to French cut a googly into the square leg.

(I mean, if that’s not good. I have no idea what I just said there.)