Viewpoint News, July 2009

Does your company value test?

by James Campbell - jac@viewpointusa.com

You may remember from previous emails that the seminar topics surrounded best practices for the development of a test system and for finding ways to leverage the most benefits for your company. A key point throughout all the sessions we presented was "how much is enough?" We believe that cost needs to be balanced against capability.

This theme garnered a lot of interaction at the open lunch discussion after the seminar. It was fairly amazing to me how common the main issues were:

Having good specifications
Addressing the typical belief that test adds no value to the company
Organizing and managing test data and reporting
Wanting the product design team to work with test engineers
Knowing the right amount of documentation and process

Of course some companies stressed some issues more than others, but the desire to have good specs was universal. In upcoming e-Newsletters, I'll explore more of the seminar topics and the feedback we received. But, the one topic I do want to discuss now is the perceived value of test.

Many companies think that test adds no value. When I made this statement at the seminar, I got some heads nodding. My purpose for making this statement was to stress that an important part of our jobs as test engineers is to be able to justify the costs of test systems to our bosses.

For example, when I discussed existing test systems, it was fairly well understood by all that reduction in cycle time, enhanced measurement accuracy, and so on, were good means of justifying upgrades. The big challenge lay in new test systems. Here there is no benchmark to compare.

This slide got some chuckles: it has an equation! I really wanted to get everyone thinking about looking at test system costs and values across the entire company. Not just manufacturing benefits, but quality and design and marketing as well. For example, having the design team know that you will save failure data and push a summary report to them now makes the test system valuable to them.

We all need to start thinking about a test system as a tool to enhance the capabilities of the company as a whole. Not only do we need to be technically competent, but we all need to help our own companies understand the benefits that testing can accrue. Everyone in test needs to show their management that test can be leveraged to reduce costs, through rework improvements, liability reduction, design improvements, and so on. Such activities will promote your position.

Data management and reporting was another topic that surfaced time and time again. Test systems collect a lot of data. Understandably, test engineers are more focused on collecting those measurements and not using the data. But, we test engineers need to recognize that we are generating important stuff and useful information in that pile of test data.

Next month, we'll officially start off the series of Best Practices with a discussion of challenges with test.

Here's to improving the value of test!

Jim