_News_
David Hayman joins Qual IT
12th April 2010
"Qual IT has made a number of significant management appointments in the first part of 2010", says Jon McPhee, Director of Testing Services.
David Hayman has joined Qual IT as Test Practice Manager – Auckland. David is a leading proponent of testing excellence and thought leadership, and will be running Qual IT's testing services team.
John Campbell is the new Wellington Test Practice Manager, replacing Teresa Bates who has moved to Australia.
Andrew Johnston CA is appointed to a new position of Chief Operating Officer. He has 16 years' experience in accounting and business advisory services.
ISTQB Success
February 2010
A group of Qual IT resources have recently successfully passed the ISTQB Foundation course run by Software Education. "Qual IT is proud to support and work with the Software Education team for ongoing education of the Qual IT team", said Jon McPhee - Director of Testing Services".
Waikato & Tauranga Presence
December 2009
"Qual IT's servicing of the Tauranga and Waikato regions has been further added to with a Test Consultant now based full time in these regions", advised Michael Carnie - General Manager Auckland and Upper North Island. "Over the past four years Qual IT has delivered functional and technical testing services to key organisations here, and this represents a further investment of resources to work with our local clients.
Qual IT joins IBM Partnerworld
28th September 2009
Qual IT has announced that it has joined the IBM Partnerworld programme. 'A number of our key clients in New Zealand and Australia are existing or potential users of the IBM Rational suite of test management tools"says Craig Dewhurst, "This simply makes sense to formalise Qual IT's existing capability and expertise in IBM Rational.
Growth built on quest for quality
The NZ Herald By Yoke Har Lee
8 June 2009
Craig Dewhurst is eyeing up the British market. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Breaking boundaries is a way of life for Wellington-based company Qual IT Solutions. The company has seen its headcount double in the past two years to 70 people, underpinned by a similarly robust pace of revenue growth.
And while the market has definitely softened, says its general manager Craig Dewhurst, Qual IT is hoping to stay on course for double-digit growth this year.
The company specialises in quality assurance testing of e-commerce systems, web technologies, and enterprise resource planning systems, among other things. It helps clients ensure that their technologies and systems can withstand the toughest tests and will deliver on their performance specifications.
Qual IT also trains businesses which want to learn how to conduct UAT (user acceptance) testing and provides consultancy on quality assurance.
Several factors have helped propel the company on to its fast growth track since it was set up in 2004 by founders Jon McPhee and Shane Hewson. Dewhurst has since become the third partner in the company. The three men have over 50 years of managerial and technical experience in various industries, especially financial services and IT.
One of the biggest drivers of growth for Qual IT is the voracious appetite for innovation in IT solutions. "People are a lot more ambitious with the functions they are trying to achieve,"says Dewhurst. "IT applications are also critical to a lot of businesses. All these changes come with the risk of added uncertainties to any project."Clients who have been turning to Qual IT's testing services have come to realise the benefits of outside expertise.
"A lot of our clients do have in-house teams,"says Dewhurst. "But the high levels of change that IT projects see add new levels of risks to these projects. The testing portion is typically between 15 and 25 per cent of a project's cost.
"We help keep the cost of testing down - often by bringing on high levels of skilled resource. This helps ensure the quality of a project is not compromised." Key selling points, says Dewhurst, have been Qual IT's ability to keep to planned timelines and deliver the desired goals.
One customer has been Sydney-based Centrum Systems, a professional services and IT consulting services firm which is a partner with Qual IT on several projects as well as being a client. Centrum's director for business development, Helen Monaghan, believes Qual IT has stood out from competitors because "they are not looking at what they do as an IT project but as a business project. They are highly focused on the business outcomes".
One of the evolutions taking place in testing methodology is the focus on breaking boundaries, by simulating events that will put the systems under duress.
Testers no longer work on whether the system will break, Dewhurst says. "The way software testing has developed over the last five years, we work along the principle of 'how do we break this?' or 'what can we do to break this?' This requires the testers to do what the developers have not thought of."Qual IT is aware of the need to keep competitors at bay, and to improve its own internal processes, systems and human capital.
A few years ago it embarked on a process to capture knowledge in the company by identifying its key intellectual property (IP) and systematically documenting that knowledge so it can be preserved, improved upon and replicated.
"We have developed our key practices, developed the processes we used and added consistency to our way of doing things. We have introduced good governance, by bringing on an external chairman, and have used a number of external advisers to help us. We have also brought on BDO Spicers to do our accounting, and like any good company, outsource some functions such as our network and IT,"Dewhurst says.
The company has several competitors, from individual contract workers, to large one-stop-shop integrators of IT solutions who undertake the whole gamut of IT work, to other similar independent companies.
Dewhurst says big project integrators tend to present solutions based on what they typically do and the technology they represent. But the reality is that companies no longer rely on single technology solutions.
"This creates opportunities for us,"he says. Two years ago the company assessed its prospects and the economic environment. "We predicted the economy will slow down so we took measures to diversify our growth. Part of that strategy was to diversify our markets."
That spurred a move into the Australian market and Qual IT clinched a large project from an insurance company across the Tasman to test its quality assurance.
The company is now positioning itself to move into the British market once the economic mood lifts. "We will use the Australian experience to develop our model [for the British market]."The US is another possibility further down the road. Dewhurst believes the vital step to exporting services to the US is developing the right relationship or partnership.
"That really is the key,"he says.
Qual IT expands Infrastructure testing
11 May 2009
"Qual IT has further expanded it's Infrastructure testing service offering"says Shane Hewson Director of Technical Testing. "Demand across our Client base continues to grow for this very specialised form of test engineering and we have responded with increasing our team capacity and also the breadth of our skill base and knowledge of the range of approaches needed."
22 March 09
One of Qual IT's senior consultants spent time in Marseilles, France in March 09 with Neotys, and became the first person in the world to be fully certified for the specialised Neoload performance test tool. "Qual IT is now part of the beta testing programme and is able to make recommendations for future enhancements. Through our test engineers' expert use of Neoload, Qual IT Solutions can provide a very cost effective solution to our Clients. We also provide training, webinars and support to Neotys's clients in Australia and New Zealand."says Shane Hewson Director of Technical Testing.
Qual IT wins testing services panel
March 2009
Qual IT has won a place of the panel to provide testing services to a major Government ministry. The ministry cannot be named for confidentiality reasons. The services to be provided by Qual IT includes everything from test consultancy, and functional testing to technical testing.
Qual IT support for Neotys in Australasia
8 January 2009
"Qual IT's relationship with French company Neotys over the past two years has been further cemented with an arrangement put in place in 2008 for Qual IT to provide professional services and training to Neotys's clients in Australia and New Zealand"said Shane Hewson, Qual IT's Director of Technical Testing.
"Neotys is very pleased to have Qual IT as our top partner in the Australasian region, to be our "operational base". Qual IT also has the ability to contribute to our NeoLoad product development as a beta tester for future releases."Said Thomas Ripoche - Account Executive, Neotys.
Steve Willsher joins Qual IT
10th December 2008
"Qual IT is proud to announce the appointment of Steve Willsher as Senior Test Consultant."said Jon McPhee, Director of Testing Services. "Steve has extensive experience of the IT industry in New Zealand and the UK. His background in public sector, the finance industry and defence engineering, together with his consultancy skills are a significant addition to Qual IT's management team."
Qual IT to open an office in Auckland
1 August 2008
"Due to strong demand from our national customers and the potential in the Auckland and upper North Island market, Qual IT Solutions is to open an office in Auckland in September 2008"announced Craig Dewhurst, Qual IT General Manager.
"We will shortly be inviting experienced testers from the Auckland region to join the Qual IT team and are planning for a combination of contract and permanent resources in the team. Our services have expanded and in addition to the strong skills and processes in functional testing, we have one of the largest independent test engineering team in the country for non-functional testing, who can carry out assignments all over New Zealand", said Craig Dewhurst.
Qual IT New Chairman of the Qual IT Board
1 July 2008
"Qual IT Solutions Limited is pleased to advise that Mr. Craig Weise of Berkeley Capital Advisors Limited has been appointed as Chairman", said Craig Dewhurst, General Manager.
"Craig has over 15 years of commercial, financial and legal experience gained in the U.S., European and New Zealand markets. A seasoned corporate financier, advisor, and executive, he has worked with both domestic and international companies at every point along the business lifecycle.
He has served as a director of companies in the financial services, technology and hospitality sectors and has been an advisor to boards operating across a variety of industries on strategic, financial, transactional and governance matters. Craig is a creative strategist who is passionate about helping companies realise sustainable growth. His educational background (BA (Honours) Economics, Juris Doctorate (Law)) combined with the breadth of his financial, commercial and legal experience provides Qual IT with sound guidance as it enters an exciting new phase of growth."
Qual IT Solutions & Aura Software Security formalize joint service offering
1 May 2008
Craig Dewhurst, Qual IT's General Manager and Andy Prow, Aura's Managing Director today announced the formalization of the relationship that has been developing over the past two years, offering a "Production Strength"software testing service, in the form of combined performance and security testing.
"A growing number of our clients are asking for security testing to be included as part of the test programme in addition to functional and technical testing" says Craig Dewhurst, "the Aura team have developed an excellent reputation for delivering meaningful and actionable security reports. We have also used Aura to validate the security of our Wellington test lab."
"Time and time again we see security and performance testing going hand-in-hand for clients to test the production readiness of their applications and environments. So many applications are delivered over the web or internally through web portals, that it is now essential to carry out regular security penetration and performance/load testing.", says Andy Prow.
"We selected Qual IT to work with because of their methodical & engineering approach to technical testing, which has been of great use during our product development & testing"
Qual IT Solutions is an independent QA Test consultancy specializing in QA business analysis, functional and technical testing. Qual IT operates to ISTQB practices and is test tool agnostic. For information contact Craig Dewhurst on (04) 472 3745 or craig.dewhurst@qualit.co.nz
www.qualit.co.nz
Aura Software Security Ltd is a specialist IT Security Consultancy based in Wellington performing penetration testing and application security reviews. Aura services both NZ and Australian clients, from SMEs to some of NZ's largest corporates and government agencies. For more information contact Andy Prow on 0272 872 151 or Andy.Prow@AuraSoftwareSecurity.co.nz
www.AuraSoftwareSecurity.co.nz
11 Sept 2007
Craig Dewhurst, General Manager advised that recent consultancy work by Qual IT with Clients has seen a marked interest by CIO's and other IT executives in bringing QA best practices to bear on projects much earlier in the SDLC. This earlier focus is starting to achieve positive results in terms of better documentation of requirements, stronger entry exit criteria to assist with the Client / external Developer engagement, and more consistent time boxing of the investment in testing. To find out more please contact QualIT at info@qualit.co.nz or call (04) 472 3745
Positive Response to UAT Training
27 August 2007
"The response to Qual IT's new UAT training programme for business people has been fantastic"says Andrew Mudford Head of Qual IT's Business & Requirements Analysis Practice. The 8 hour course split over two half days is practical, applicable and tailored to the project in hand. Most users get thrown in on day one and expected to become a tester overnight. The reality is that a change in mindset and some new skills are needed to do a good job of UAT. One course attendee said "I wish this course was available when I first did UAT, it is a great refresher now as I head into UAT for a new project".
Qual IT’s Test Lab Opens for Business
14 May 2007
QUAL IT announced today that the extension to the Wellington premises has been completed and the new Test Lab is open for business. The test lab provides the infrastructure and specialist.
New General Manager
23 March 2007
QUAL IT have appointed Craig Dewhurst as General Manager of the 40 strong Qual IT test consulting & resourcing team for corporate & government. Previously at Sandstone Technology, he has Australasian experience for ANZ & NAB, and Public Trust.
Director Jon McPhee will lead the Test Management Practice and Shane Hewson will lead the Technical Testing practice.
Hot Wired for Speed - CitiLink
2 March 2007
QUAL IT have today announced the installation of the high bandwidth CitiLink optical fibre link for use in the forthcoming Test Lab. Now a key part of the Wellington IT Infrastructure and use by corporate, national and local government organisations alike, CitiLink provides a highly resilient, very high speed/capacity link.