QA Consultants is a Canadian technology success
story and a case study of how to disrupt a static
industry. Initially, the company provided testing
resources for companies looking to outsource their
testing requirements. By prioritising innovation
strategies focused on dramatically improving
client value and internal efficiencies, and
spending millions on R&D to develop new testing
methodologies, automation and internal processes,
QA Consultants has today become a dynamic and
rapidly growing IT services organisation, and
North America’s largest dedicated software quality
assurance and testing company. Peter Watkins, Chief
Operating Officer, explains some of the key factors
that have led to this company’s success and the role
played in its development by the National Research
Council of Canada Industrial Research Assistance
Program (NRC IRAP) and ITEA, among others.
Going local
Founded by Alex Rodov in 1994, QA Consultants
has been in business for some 26 years,
beginning as a subcontractor to the major
players like Accenture and Deloitte before
deciding to go directly to the industry, initially
through staff augmentation. “When I came on
board, about eight years ago,” Peter recalls,
“we looked at the offshore market and made
some fundamental strategic choices, one of
which was to be local. This meant our clients
would have direct access to our resources,
whether in Canada or beyond. To be able to
compete with Asian price points, we had to
create a different model. And NRC IRAP helped
us many years ago to find a way of improving
the efficiency of our testing methodologies
such that we could compete with offshore
prices. This resulted in something called the
TestFactoryTM . In essence, our TestFactoryTM enabled us to bridge the 30% inefficiency gap
between development and testing. Not only
were we able to get our price below that of
offshore competition but we were also able to
generate the benefits of being local. That was
a great differentiator in building our business.
In fact, NRC IRAP has always been enormously
supportive of our research right through to the
present and has been a key contributor to our
success.
Criticality of software innovation
“As we applied more science, innovation and
technology, the testing industry began to change quite dramatically. We’ve gone from manual
testing to automation testing – we’re using the
latest science of advanced model-driven based
testing. Our engineers are Masters and PhDs.
We’re building digital twins of factory robots
and vehicles to do testing in a fully simulated
environment. In short, the science of testing has
helped us transform our business.” He goes on.
“It stands to reason, therefore, that software
innovation is critical to our business. We build
systems to test systems and that requires
systems engineers we hire, train and deploy.
The industry is advancing rapidly and so we
are grateful for our involvement in ITEA, and to
NRC IRAP which was instrumental in bringing
us together.” As Canada’s National Office
for Eureka, NRC IRAP not only facilitated the
connection to ITEA but also provided valuable
support early on through various partnering
development activities that introduced QA Consultants to potential collaboration
opportunities beyond Canada’s borders. They
also provided specialised advisory services
through the NRC IRAP Industrial Technology
Advisor, who supported them throughout their
international collaboration journey, from coinnovation partner selection to project proposal
development and execution.
The ITEA business boost
“What we have found is that North America
is behind the curve relative to the advanced
testing science being applied in Europe. As
part of the ITEA initiative, we were introduced
to Dr Holger Schlingloff, who is Chief Scientist
of the System Quality Center (SQC) at the
Fraunhofer Institute FOKUS and professor for
software engineering at the Humboldt University
of Berlin. In addition to working with us on
the XIVT project, he came over to train our
automation team on advanced model-based
design and testing methods. This training
enabled us to create huge efficiencies and has
become transformational for our business. I’d
go so far as to say that our involvement in ITEA
has created a kind of future-proofing for our
company in many ways. In the XIVT project, we
are taking a methodological approach with a
focus on the automotive sector. Ecosystems
involving the Internet of Things have created
an exponential number of configurations to
be tested often in the millions. This testing
complexity has a major negative impact on
industry’s ability to adequately test and
release products in a timely manner. Apart
from leading the Canadian consortium, one of
the methodologies for variant testing we have
already produced is called BeVAR, not to be
confused with Bieber,” Peter jokes, “and this
is helping to give an efficiency boost that pays
off in terms of real economic value that we are
applying to our 'other' client projects such as
testing Guidewire or SAP implementations, or
testing complex digital transformation initiatives
in retail and financial services.”
XIVT
The XIVT project runs from 2018 to 2022
and aims to define a method and toolchain
for testing highly configurable, variant-rich
embedded systems in the automotive, rail,
telecommunication and industrial production
domains. The method is founded on a knowledge-based analysis of requirements
formulated in natural language, and a modelbased test generation at product-line level.
By generating a highly effective, cost-efficient
quality assurance, the shift to autonomous,
flexible and adaptive applications is enhanced
and results in higher test coverage, more flexible
processes of higher quality and better products.
A diverse and collaborative network
“Much of the communication during the project
has been virtual so COVID-19 has not dramatically
impacted our effectiveness. We do miss the
face-to-face contact. When we actually come
together, we do get a lot done. The after-work
comradery also helps with building trust,” Peter
says with a smile. “But the project is nevertheless
progressing extremely well. And what is an
enormous plus for our involvement is the array of
cross-cultural differences. People approach and
deal with situations differently. We learn so much
from our XIVT colleagues who are, quite literally,
the smartest in the world at what they do. ITEA
enables an enormously important network. By
the way, QA Consultants was set to sponsor
a World Productivity Congress on Advanced
Manufacturing on Industry 4.0 in Bangalore
in May this year. Through our ITEA network
connections we were able to invite prominent
leaders such as Zeynep Sarılar, Chairwoman of
ITEA, and Holger Schlingloff, Chief Scientist at
Fraunhofer FOKUS, to be keynote speakers. They
accepted but due to COVID-19, the event had to
be rescheduled to 2022. Their willingness really
shows the spirit of collaboration and support
there is in the ITEA Network.”
In conclusion, Peter notes that with the United
States not being an ITEA participant, “the
knowledge and lessons we’re getting and the
new technologies that we’re building, several
of which we’re looking to patent, as a result
of our participation, give us a competitive
edge and enhances the trust our clients have
in our capabilities knowing we have earned
the endorsement of ITEA and NRC IRAP in
approaching the North American marketplace.”
More information
https://qaconsultants.com
