Quality Cops

By Deborah Radcliff

June 12, 2000 12:00 PM ET

Computerworld - Quality assurance (QA) managers are responsible for the success or failure of mission-critical information technology systems. They prove out these systems, test them for bugs and sign off on them. If a system is life-critical - say, an air traffic control or emergency services network - one piece of buggy software could mean the difference between life and death. It's no job for the faint of heart.
Susan Burgess ends her conversations with a sappy, "Have a quality day."
But with 20 years' experience in QA, she has a right to sappiness. During that time, she's also earned a heap of accreditations and respect as an internationally recognized expert and speaker on software engineering quality for organizations like the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc. and the Quality Assurance Institute USA.

			Who: Susan Burgess Title: Quality assurance director Company: Information Technology Business Group Inc., Potomac, Md. Background: Director of the Quality Assurance Association of Maryland; advisory board member for the Quality Assurance Institute USA; co-author of the Testing Capability Maturity Model and the Method for Optimizing Software Testing Model Nature of work: Ensuring that new software, hardware and upgrades perform as specified; that IT project requirements are met; and that all applicable standards are specified, met and followed. Also involves oversight for testing projects and programs, reporting project status to senior management and recommending quality improvements.

As the QA director at Information Technology Business Group Inc., a quality assurance and software engineering consulting firm in Potomac, Md.,
Burgess spends most of her time managing teams that examine software and hardware applications at key times in development cycles.
The teams look for bugs as well as security issues and faulty implementations and try to determine whether the application does what it's supposed to, from the user's perspective. Then Burgess decides whether the software or system is ready for prime time.
"I always find some problems: defects, poorly defined project requirements, applications that aren't user-friendly or that will crash under user load," Burgess explains.
Quality Peeves
Reporting such problems makes her none too popular among the project leaders. In fact, she's had some raucous screaming matches in the hallways with IT project leaders who felt Burgess was making them look bad. But she doesn't back down. The pressure to do things right outweighs the flack she takes from disgruntled project teams.
"If I approve a project and it fails, I could get sued. Liability in my job is a real issue. For example, what was the liability when the Mars Lander fell from

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