Stop Blaming QA and Start Diagnosing the Hidden Inefficiencies Behind Delivery Delays: Five Drivers that Slow Releases And Erode Developer Productivity

''The low hanging fruit'' is not always the one worth cutting. Most of the time, it's the only thing we aim for just because we are too lazy or incapable of reaching out to what's deep and high. ''What is the low hanging fruit?'' is sometimes then a direction of ease rather than impact. When it comes to efficiency and speed of software delivery, I've always witnessed initiatives to cut QA. At the end of the day, QA is a visible stage in the software production process that has its volume and shape – the low hanging fruit so to speak. It's not software creation activity, it involves manual activity, and it has its own cycle of time other than development time. That's why when people think of what to optimize to achieve speed, they think of removing or shrinking QA. However, at the higher trenches of the software development tree more drastic inefficiencies that delay software delivery and kill its productivity. This article examines those inefficiencies for the sake of directing our attention to what we really need to solve to improve delivery speed. It turns out that it's not QA that we should attack the most. If we really want to be efficient, let's leave the ''low hanging fruit'' mentality and aim for what's high and deep – the real drivers behind software delivery inefficiency.