Testing products, surely that’s something you do once you’ve developed something? Tobania Specialised Testing Services actually start the ‘finding the fault’ process before anything has even been produced. Prevention is better than cure – after all, this is better both for the customer and the end users.

'Finding the fault' is better known in production environments and IT circles as First Time Right. Sebastiaan van Gucht and Christophe Soens from Tobania STS are both huge supporters of this.

This is because it results in significant time and cost savings for all parties involved. “Testing can be incredibly expensive and labour intensive. Even though we have managed to partly resolve this through automation, it will always continue to be reactive.

You don’t start measuring the quality until the product has been developed and produced, whilst the intention should be to produce the right application, integration or software right from the very start. We try to place the emphasis on good things with first time right: what is the customer’s priority, what does the product need to satisfy before we start testing, what makes it useful for the user?”

This preventative testing may still sound a little abstract right now, so let’s compare first time right to a new house. It goes without saying we would all like to own our own home. The architect sketches out a washing area on the plans and this naturally includes sockets. The contractor thinks the washing machine and dryer are going to be stacked on top of each other and positions the sockets high up on the wall. However, the future occupant wants to position the machines next to each other and is therefore actually expecting low sockets. That’s how simple it is to create a tricky problem: as a result of expectations which are not clearly expressed, as people are making incorrect assumptions, followed by insufficient communication. Recognisable, right? If Tobania STS had intervened, these sockets would have ended up in exactly the right place.