1. Test/Support Synergy Forest Weld Director of Quality Assurance and Support Arxan Technologies, Inc.

2. Strategies Synergy: more than just Test, more than just QA—all of Engineering Support: customer info to Engineering, and Engineering info to customers Test: customer-meaningful tests, with insight into internal risks Quality: build in quality, = customer satisfaction

3. Practices Support Report—what are those customers really doing with our software? ◦Use-case calibration ◦QA advise on expected behavior, isolation, workarounds Support Top 10—key customer pain areas to resolve in the product Support input to requirements and design Confirm or correct QA impression of validity of test case or usability input

4. Practices, cont’d Close-to-user opinion on defect severity or priority Effective Alpha/Beta test (help both ways) Alpha/Beta feedback direct to QA Escapes! Review customer-defect arrivals and test lessons Train the customers on the user docs; train the user docs to the customer needs

5. Not not Support doing test ◦Support: make things work ◦Support “not reliable” (not schedulable), priority on reacting to customer issues not Test doing support ◦Practice at customer interaction ◦Getting the customer going vs finding every issue