Software Quality Assurance and Testing / Change and Release Management

In my most recent position, I was asked to facilitate and implement SQA and Change/Release management for the North American region of a global organization that had none. I have summarized these activities below.

Software Quality Assurance Management and Implementation:

Work with the business to learn current state of quality process.
Define methodology blueprint and vision for organization to follow.
Design, develop, and implement all aspects of SQA methodology appropriate for organization.
Lead and mentor team members in direction of independent problem solving and creative solutions as part of QA process.

Change and Release Management within the ITIL framework:

Develop, coordinate, and implement overall Change/Release Management policy and process according to ITIL Methodology in coordination with management and functional/operational team leads.
Facilitate Change Advisory Board (CAB) member discussion and consensus on policy and process using the framework as a guideline but within the working structure of the business.
Chair CAB meetings which facilitate cross functional communication of work and outages, forward planning of changes, reduction of change related incidents in production.
Champion process usage, compliance, and continuous improvement.
Maintain SOX and audit compliance.
Create, facilitate, manage and maintain CAB meeting and Change process This effort required a great deal of time and effort, attention to detail, coordination of process and personnel from different groups to maintain high level of adherence to Change process among teams. Maintained Forward Schedule of Change (FSC), agenda for meetings, public calendar of changes. Scheduled "mini-cabs" to address issues and do continuous improvement to optimize process and procedures.

Successes and Benefits:

The benefits to the organization of a functioning change and release management process include but are not limited to and were achieved are:

Ensure that standardized methods and procedures are used for efficient and prompt handling of all changes in order to minimize the impact of change related incidents on service quality.
Forward planning of all changes.
Cross functional communication of impact of proposed / approved changes on services and applications in production.
Ensure that SOX compliance and auditing requirements are met.
Our compliance officer said that Change Management has passed all audits in 2006.
According to an independent consulting group (Pink Elephant, Pink Scan), our group created a change process to CMM 2 in 4 months when average time is 12 to 18 months.

Let me add that I believe adherence to SOX and audit guidelines are only a baseline starting point. The quality goals must be set much higher in order to achieve a higher standard of excellence. The problem with SOX now is that many people assume that once they have complied, their job is finished. In fact it is up to the change and quality champions to help drive best practice standards of SDLC and quality assurance and raise awareness in the organization.