Aug 9, 2017
As the healthcare industry continues to change and evolve, the demand for advanced healthcare technology is on the upswing. Development teams find themselves hard-pressed to deliver technology faster and more efficiently. Healthcare organizations and vendors developing new technologies are the perfect candidates for the Agile practice, where overlapping, cross-functional roles and frequent collaboration are keys to success.
One obstacle to delivering these technologies in timely and efficient ways is the prevalence of multi-vendor outsourcing strategies. When development and other IT functions are distributed in multiple locations and time zones around the world, it can be difficult for these teams to collaborate and stay on the same page. Unless companies dramatically transform their product development methodologies, scope creep and quality issues arise, and deadlines slip. As a result, firms cannot move fast enough to compete.
To improve the efficiency problems, many companies have elected to integrate the business analyst (BA) and quality assurance (QA) responsibilities into the same role, placing the same person on both ends of the process.
For exampke, a top 5 U.S. health insurance provider found it necessary to shift its focus from simply selling insurance to developing population health applications. The company develops applications for patients, nurses and physicians to help engage members and enable them to monitor their own health. To improve communication among development roles, emids recommended integrating the BA and QA roles to streamline development.
The company discovered that the BA/QA integrated team identified more metrics that contribute the quality of the product. The team has also enabled the company to identify problems earlier in the process and solve them at a lower cost. In addition, the new model resulted in better collaboration between groups, with both offshore vendors regularly participating in discussions with the product leadership team at the insurance company.
Learn more about how BA/QA integration can benefit your organization in our white paper.