Meet the Experts: Do we have a new digital testing buying persona?

Technology is no longer an exclusive domain of enterprise IT teams. Business units and corporate functions, such as marketing, customer success, procurement, accounting or logistics have become major consumers of Information Technology. Driven by the need to get products and services to market faster, the Lines of Business (LoBs) are rapidly adopting digital platforms and integrating newest technologies, such as mobile, cloud, IoT, and data analytics into the very core of their operations. With the LoBs wielding a much larger share of corporate budgets, is it now time to regard them as primary buyers of technology products and services? I sat down with Michael Goggin, the leader of Amdocs testing services for a major Tier 1 carrier in North America, to hear his opinion on how the role of the business is changing as a user of technology, and what affects it might have on the testing services market.

Ronit: Michael, you have been in the Telecommunications industry for over 25 years. Is your experience leading large IT projects for major US carriers helping you be successful in your current role at Amdocs?

Michael: I think the main benefit of my experience at the carrier side is that I still think more like a customer than a vendor. I try to look at application quality and testing in the context of the end-user experience and the organizations' business goals, and always try to find an approach that fits best with the way applications are being developed and delivered. Over the years, I have built some great relationships and mutual trust with the people in this industry, which definitely helps me better navigate the waters when dealing with our clients.

Ronit: Do you see the role of the LoBs changing - from a mere consumer of information technology to an influencer, or perhaps even a driver of IT decisions?

Michael: In today's market, innovation and speed are the main factors that help companies get ahead of the competition. In this fast-paced environment, business units and IT can no longer operate as separate, siloed entities. The LoB is often the primary influencer of many technological innovations and decisions - their need for new technologies is driven by the need to reach more customers, deliver faster, more secure, highly personalized service. But they can't do it alone - they rely on partnership with IT to explore, procure, implement, integrate and support the systems that help the company achieve these goals. Like any successful partnership, this relationship should allow for compromise, negotiation, an occasional shift in priorities to respond to changes, and flexibility; but the key to success is not to pursue competing agendas, or for the LoB to become its own technology provider, but rather to have a common goal and mutual understanding of how technology decisions will affect the company's bottom line.

Modern application landscapes are incredibly complex and interconnected. For instance, when marketing requires certain functionality to run their big promotion, they don't necessarily understand the intricacies involved in building and integrating the system needed to support it. But if an organization has the right processes in place, the CMO doesn't really need to get into technical details. Marketing can work together with IT and follow a process for defining requirements, laying out the architecture, setting objectives, defining cost and time guidelines, etc., and then continue to interact closely throughout the process to make sure that the project stays on track.

Ronit: Is IT changing their traditional delivery practices to support business demands?

Michael: The need to respond to market pressures is the main reason why we are seeing such drastic changes in the way corporate IT operates these days. Companies adopt agile and DevOps practices to become nimbler and more responsive to customer demands. Rather than waiting until development and testing are done before presenting the finished product for acceptance, IT now strives to work in more agile ways, involving the LoBs at every stage of design and development, releasing smaller pieces of functionality for review and feedback before they are integrated into a larger system. Unlike the old waterfall methods, these new practices allow for new functionality to be released faster, and to forge much between synergy between the lines of business and IT.

Ronit: Should a testing service provider still try to build a relationship directly with a business owner, such as the CMO?

Michael: Building relationships with the business side is a great way for the testing service provider to understand the company goals, get to know the key players, find out more about the organizational landscape and current processes, and get closer to the problems that the company is trying to solve. It opens the line of communication directly to the primary user of technology and helps you better understand the client's exact needs. There are certain situations where the business owner will work directly with the testing service provider, but it is always wise to involve IT in these discussions. Once a service provider has built relationships within an organization and established a level of trust and a good understanding of the client's landscape and process architecture, IT leaders will likely be very open to the idea of LoB owners working directly with the providers.

Ronit: Is the conversation about testing and quality with the business owner different than a similar conversation with an IT leader?

Michael: Today, any conversation about application quality should be about the business value, rather than purely technical benefits of testing. Especially when we are talking about quality with the LoB owner - if they are feeling the pain from not being able to run a promotion that they wish to run, or their customers are not having a good experience when using the company's mobile app, we can show how implementing the right quality practices can help solve these issues. The best way to articulate the value of testing and quality is to show the direct correlation between testing processes and business outcomes.

Ronit: What can testing service providers do to stay competitive in the world of constantly changing technologies and consumer demands?

Michael: This is an exciting time to be in the testing services business. And challenging too - we have to continuously adapt our tools and processes to make sure we can keep up with the speed of change. We no longer have weeks or months to test like we did under waterfall - automation is key to ensuring that testing doesn't become a bottleneck in agile delivery and features can be tested as fast as they are built. It's a different mindset, but that's what makes it exhilarating - things are going to continue to change, and we need to stay agile and flexible to keep up - and stay ahead - of the industry trends.