Quality, Risk assessment & Global innovation

While innovation teams usually grow fairly instinctively, we believe that the quality of the development process and products should be an explicit selection criteria when staffing decisions are made. Innovation can divert into more than one direction, using the latest technology is one way to look at it, using the latest working methodology is another equal way. In fact, modern methodologies focus on quality and implement it as it is a wise investment of time to investigate this underrated aspect of teams before personnel selections are made. From a different perspective, innovation implies the use of intellectual resources--the people and their intellectual involvement, knowledge management, and new product innovations. Innovation offers a great opportunity for quality professionals to lead the organization in improving the quality of business by contributing to profitable growth. They have the inherent advantage of knowing the customer’s pulse and the organization’s capabilities. They only lack an innovation methodology to leverage existing resources to exploit the opportunities offered by the customers.

Many risk assessment techniques designed to minimize the negative effects of the risks embedded in software projects have been proposed in the software engineering literature (Boehm, 1991). For instance, development standardization and user requirement analysis are frequently cited as important risk management techniques. The perception of risk assessment plays a large role in the manager’s strategy selection process. However, organizations have only recently viewed risks from an integrated risk-balancing perspective. Correlating that to innovation performance, obviously some risks would have a positive effect on domains such as quality, others might have a negative effect on other frequently changeable domains. 

In his book "The world is flat", what Thomas L. Friedman means by "flat" is "connected". “International Business” is the most essential phenomenon in the modern world, despite the potential business growth, it is necessary for the prosperity of the world. In the period of modern world, “International Business” is a buzzword like “Globalization”. Every moment of our life is related to business in orally or morally. To face competition, companies must have innovations. No longer an issue whether we should have or not innovations, but a condition that must be created to establish an effective innovation management. Great companies put under pressure of international competition have instruments for the management of innovation. 

In a broader sense, innovation is important to the advancement of society around the world. New and innovative products can increase the standard of living and provide people with opportunities to improve their lives. Breakthroughs in medicine and technology have significantly improved living standards around the world. Innovation has also lead to significant improvements in the way businesses operate and has closed the gaps between different markets.

The bar raiser for the classic quality assurance engineer or software engineer is now higher than ever, the profile doesn't emphasize the technical skills only, but assuring that engineering interfaces think much beyond executing test cases and unit tests, more focusing on quality enhancement and a much more efficient experience and higher performance. Becoming the customer requires a number of skills that are independent of the application domain. These include balancing potentially conflicting end-user needs, experience in requirements gathering, reporting to upper management, controlling the budget, and checking for forgotten requirements.

Having said that, agile leads to higher understanding of professional ethics among members and enhances the chances of achieving that.

Respectfully submitted,

Hisham Abdulhalim

B.Sc Software Engineering

M.Sc Software Engineering