October 2020 – This brief explores the evolution of quality assurance (QA) and testing methodologies with the adoption and expansion of Agile practices, cloud environments, and third-party SaaS integrations. Quality assurance is a critical aspect of the application development and support process. Historically, insurance carriers have implemented QA programs to various degrees. Many, however, are still focused on quality control activities.

As IT development has accelerated and digital interaction has become key to insurers’ survival, Agile has become the preferred approach for deploying new digital capabilities.

Agile transforms traditional QA; it combines QA teams with the teams that are building the software, configuring the software, and releasing the software. Additionally, cloud has added a new level of complexity since infrastructure and software components could be changing in one or more cloud environments.