re: #379 PT Barnum

Yeah. QA is the classic thing that’s always shorted in private industry. Every company I’ve ever worked at is in a constant turmoil with the QA department, since the QA department, when it’s working well, appears to not really be doing much. When they catch mistakes and send them back to be fixed on time, it’s not noticeable. Things go out on time, everything is great. So the executives start thinking that they can reduce QA, or more often, externalize it to save money. And that usually leads to more rounds of development, more work for everyone else in QA-ing their own product or following up on what QA used to follow up on.

It really takes good leadership to recognize the value of strong QA. The system doesn’t produce it naturally.