Financial Services World Quality Report Highlights

2020-21 edition

Published February 2021

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The financial services sector is obliged to be fast-moving, which is why it tends to be at the forefront in the adoption of new technologies and approaches. In last year’s World Quality Report, it noted the sector’s capacity for innovation in quality assurance (QA), in particular. It also mentioned that testing and QA were in many cases being absorbed into the mainstream of the software development lifecycle.

In these main respects, there are few signs of change in this year’s report for the financial sector, which at 19% of our total survey cohort remains the single largest sector we have consulted. Indeed, when asked about testing and QA objectives, the highest-rated responses from the sector included the contribution to business growth; ensuring end-user satisfaction; detecting software defects before go-live; and achieving quality at speed. This last response is of particular importance to financial services. Agile development environments can facilitate speed improvements, which is why moves in this direction are often an objective here.