What the audit looks at
Four dimensions, because software quality rarely fails on only one of them:
- Real coverage. Not the percentage your coverage tool reports — that number measures executed lines, not covered risk. We look at which product behaviours are actually verified, and which ones rest on hope.
- Tooling. What you use, what you pay for, and what is genuinely wired into your delivery pipeline. A tool bought and never integrated is a cost with no return.
- Process. Who decides a release is shippable, on what criteria, and what happens when those criteria are not met but the date is close.
- Maturity. Where you stand against the reference models — ISTQB, the test pyramid — and against practice observed in teams comparable to yours.
What you get
A written document, not a sales deck. It contains the assessment, the gaps ranked by cost and by effort to close, and a reasoned recommendation on what to fix first.
That ranking is the real deliverable. A list of twenty improvements with no order of priority changes nothing: it ends up in a shared drive nobody opens again. We say what comes first, and what can wait eighteen months without consequence.
When an audit is the right starting point — and when it is not
An audit is worth it when you are undecided about the investment: you know something must be done, without knowing what or how much. It also helps when a decision has to be defended to a board that wants evidence rather than intuition.
It is not worth it if you already know what is missing. In that case the audit is an expensive detour — go straight to test strategy. We will tell you so during the scoping session rather than after invoicing.
If your team is growing fast and has no established QA function yet, that case is covered on the page for growing startups.
How it runs
The scoping session is free and lasts an hour. It establishes whether an audit is justified at all, and over what scope — one team, one product, or a whole organisation.
The audit itself runs through interviews with the people who test, a read of the existing test code, and observation of your delivery pipeline. It takes a few days to two weeks depending on scope. We do not bill open-ended time: scope and price are agreed before we start.
On the absence of named references
You will find no client logos here, and no percentage of defects avoided. Our consulting engagements are under confidentiality, and the two testimonials we could technically display are not client references in the strict sense — presenting them as such would be a stretch you would catch by checking.
The scoping session is the better test: in an hour you will know whether we understand your situation. That is more reliable than a wall of logos.