The first project after getting some basic SQA training went okay. The project still took about 14 weeks, but the end result had fewer bugs than any project in recent history. Everyone generally agreed that the extra SQA work was not too terrible.
The second and third projects went well. By week 11, the customer was ready to sign off on acceptance. Again, bugs were much less common than in projects from before your ideas were put into place.
Opinions of the effectiveness of the various SQA techniques are mixed. Of particular importance, everyone hates white box testing. All three of the programmers who tried it report that they hate it and consider it a waste of time.
The Formal Technical Reviews of the SRSs and Designs seem to have had the biggest payoff. Anecdotal evidence indicates that 40% to 60% of defects are being found during these reviews. That's the good news. The bad news is that now unit testing is not turning up as many bugs as it did before, so the programmers want to skip most of the unit testing and jump right to Beta Testing - "let the customer find the bugs".
In the meantime, market conditions have changed. The expected competition never materialized. So, the heat from the VP to improve costs has been turned down.
What should we do next, if anything? Should we try adding some additional SQA activities? If so, which ones. Should we just revert back to the ways that things were done before you joined the group? Justify your answer.