Critical Success Factors of Operational Excellence in Software Quality Assurance: Best Practices for Integrated Change Control Management

Integrated Change Control Management(ICCM) is a crucial phenomenon in the IT and Software Development industry. Through ICCM, project managers can avoid all unnecessary changes that disrupt the project execution and implementation; which further contribute to project delay, cost overrun, endless rework and facing the prolonged acceptance of User Acceptance Test (UAT). However, it is common that many project managers place much emphasis of time and effort in producing a detailed and comprehensive software quality assurance plan (SQAP) as part of ICCM adoption and implementation; neglecting and overlooking other important factors which indeed contribute to successful implementation of operation excellence. As a result, understanding the critical success factors (CRFs) allows the project managers to drive best practices to work routines; indirectly encouraging and enforcing project team members to understand and commit to the assigned task effectively. This paper aims to outline the critical success factors of operational excellence of ICCM in the context of the IT industry to exceed customer expectations through best practices in improving project mindset, processes and culture. In nutshell, every team member will understand the ‘‘flow of values’’ to the customers; fostering a competitive advantage within the industry in the long term.(Abstract)