Beyond Conventional QA: Reinventing Quality Engineering for the Phygital Era | Blog
Enterprises are welcoming the adoption of phygital systems, blending physical and digital elements for next-level product experiences. While these innovations offer significant benefits, they also introduce unique quality challenges that require specialized quality engineering, multidisciplinary talent, and strategic partnerships. This blog explores these challenges and the necessary transformations needed to ensure seamless phygital experiences. Reach out to discuss further.
Enterprises are rapidly embracing phygital systems, or the integration of physical and digital components to bring out innovative and immersive product experiences in the market. For example, in the healthcare domain, medical devices are being augmented with digital capabilities for remote monitoring, telemedicine, and data-driven diagnostics. Point-of-sale (POS) systems are evolving into phygital systems with the integration of digital payment gateways, inventory management, and data analytics capabilities. The gaming industry is pushing boundaries with immersive phygital experiences through advanced gaming consoles, virtual reality (VR) headsets, and haptic feedback controllers. Automotive companies are revolutionizing transportation with connected cars, advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS), and autonomous driving features. While these emerging workflows enhance user experience, they also increase the surface area of potential quality leakages.
Enterprise phygital challenges and the role of quality function
As enterprises accelerate the introduction of phygital systems to the market, they open the door to more encounters of unique quality challenges. Enterprises now recognize that compromised product quality can have severe repercussions, including business losses and brand erosion. Consequently, they must proactively plan for contextualized quality engineering interventions tailored to address these specific challenges. The exhibit below illustrates several domain-specific phygital quality engineering challenges and potential solutions required to ensure seamless phygital experiences.
Evolving quality functions to serve emerging phygital assurance needs
Addressing the quality challenges outlined above will require fundamental rejigging of quality functions across key critical dimensions highlighted in the exhibit below.
- Transforming quality engineering talent: Quality engineering professionals will have to develop multidisciplinary skillsets spanning hardware, embedded systems, data validation, and deep domain expertise. Upskilling in essential areas such as regulatory compliance landscape, payment gateway workflows of POS systems, game logic, and safety requirements of automotive systems will be key for phygital assurance success
- Adopting specific toolsets: Beyond traditional software quality engineering tools (be it open source or third-party toolsets), phygital assurance mandates would require investment in specialized toolsets such as hardware-in-loop (HIL) testing, robotic arms, and data validation tools. Enterprises will also need to invest in developing expertise in using these specialized tools
- Forging external partnerships: Forging partnerships with external technology and service providers will give enterprise access to specialized product engineering and testing expertise these firms already possess, which will help enterprises in attaining phygital success
The road ahead
As enterprises race to roll out phygital products, faster time-to-market will not be a differentiator, but a necessity to attain competitive advantage. But this quest to shorten release cycles cannot come at the cost of product quality. Phygital assurance expertise is critical to ensure flawless phygital experiences. However, enterprise in-house capabilities alone may not suffice, and hence, ecosystem partnerships are pivotal. Enterprise must judiciously select partners that can bring in the right set of quality engineering talent and toolset expertise that will help enterprises meet their assurance requirements.
To share your thoughts and discuss research on the future of phygtial assurance, please contact Ankit Gupta, [email protected], or Ankit Nath, [email protected].
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