Suresh, what is your concept for worldwide quality work?


Suresh Jayaraman: In order to improve the quality of our products, every one of our team members has to put himself into the customer's shoes. We mimic how the product will be used. We have constant and close contact to our customers, which enables us to analyse and meet their needs. In addition, we take the experience the customers has had with our products into account, and we pre-release beta versions. This is how we achieve an evolved and dedicated QED department.

Which products do you personally focus on?


Suresh Jayaraman: As a QED manager, I concentrate on two products: Captivate 4, which is entirely engineered in India and distributed globally. I am responsible for the end-to-end product quality. Second, I am responsible for the eLearning suite, which is a bundle of products that have already been tested by the individual product teams. Here I focus on workflows and processes between the elements - for example installation, upgrade, workflow, and support.

According to which international standards do you work?


Suresh Jayaraman: The standards vary from product to product, but of course, our eLearning solutions meet standards like AICC, SCORM 1.2 and 2004. In our software work, we apply standards like CMMI and others.

Which qualifications do the responsible employees need if they want to work in your team?


Suresh Jayaraman: Typically, they all have to have a degree in computer science plus several years of practice. Our QED managers usually have at least ten years of experience. When we hire new people, there is no formal requirement of specific industry certificates, but we need employees with strong leadership and management skills. Recruiting is very competitive.

How do you train your worldwide staff so that those who work in San Francisco follow the same quality standards as in Bangalore?


Suresh Jayaraman: We have an Adobe-wide training programme for quality managers and team members. Our human resources department defines courses, for example in leadership and performance management; these are either internal or external courses.

We send our quality staff to conferences on software testing to learn about new testing methods, to courses on project management automation, software and quality metrics, and to many other similar events. When they come home from these conferences, they share their knowledge in Wikis and evaluate the events in group meetings. And we do use our own technology, Adobe Connect, to run worldwide online sessions for trainings.

Are these courses and events obligatory?


Suresh Jayaraman: Not all of the courses are mandatory, but the management team works very closely with HR to identify individual needs of employees in order to enhance their skill sets. Adobe offers employees opportunities to expand their skill sets by actively promoting training sessions.

And how do you know which trainings are important?


Suresh Jayaraman: We have annual quality summits with QED managers as well as an internal quality website to identify important topics and share best practice.

Is there a specialist for each quality process - like software testing or requirements engineering - or are you responsible for all of them?


Suresh Jayaraman: Requirements engineering is done at one point by product managers, but understanding it is teamwork. I have 25 to 30 people in my team: Some check the automation, others take care of the non-functional testing, and still others are responsible for functional testing. However, we all do customer scenarios to ensure that the product works in all respects.