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Cornelia Sittel
Dragon Systems
International Software Quality Assurance Analyst

1. What is your title and role?
My official job title here at Dragon Systems is "International Software Quality Assurance Analyst". In more concrete terms, this means that I am responsible for testing and evaluating our flagship retail product Dragon NaturallySpeaking, which allows continuous speech recognition on a PC. My job is to test the software as well as edit and proofread all documentation, online help, marketing collateral, and web content that accompany this product in the foreign languages that I work in, i.e. German, French, Italian, Spanish, and Dutch.

2. How does testing of Dragon's international web sites differ from testing the U.S. web site?
Keep in mind that making a foreign language speech recognition product is not simply a straightforward software localization process. In fact, the localization of the user interface, help and documentation is the easy part.

To function in another language, a speech recognition product needs basic reengineering: the recognition engine used may be the same for U.S. English or French or German, but the acoustic model and the language model used, i.e. the phoneme set, the grammatical rules and the vocabulary used in the recognition process, are language-specific.

On top of that, the underlying technology has to solve different problems for each language, e.g. homophones in French or compounds in German, so that the intrinsic implementation varies among the foreign language versions and with it the information needed for the users. Also, the operating system under which the software runs may vary slightly from language to language (e.g. different service packs for Windows NT in some foreign languages). And, of course, the customer base may not be homogenous in all foreign countries, e.g. in Germany many of our customers are lawyers, in the U.S. we have a large medical user base.

All this means that every foreign site has specific information needs. Therefore, only parts of the U.S. web site are translated, and just like the products intrinsic technology is language-specific, the international web sites may vary largely in size and content.

3. How do you test these web sites?
The web sites are maintained by the foreign offices but it is one of the responsibilities of the International QA team to make sure that all downloadable software, e.g. service releases or so-called "patches" that fix known problems, are accessible with different browsers and browser versions, under all supported operating systems, and in conjunction with the edition and version of Dragon NaturallySpeaking that they are meant to enhance. And, of course, we also test the links to and from the sites.

A detailed review of the text for technical and linguistic accuracy goes without saying. All problems found are entered in a specific database and fixed by the webmaster in cooperation with our international developers and then verified by QA before the web site goes live.

4. What kinds of skills are required for an International Software Quality Assurance Analyst?
The short answer is: a merciless eye for detail and the obsession to break any new toy real quick! I am exaggerating, of course, but QA is really more of a mindset that you acquire than a fixed set of skills that you acquire through formal training.

Typically, international quality assurance analysts have a background as localization specialists; they have studied foreign languages and/or computer science, and are very critical in terms of the "native" quality of the software they eventually release to marketing for distribution to the customer. Also, they must have strong communication skills, not just to test scripts or bug reports (from a typo in an error message to a crash that freezes your system), but for their work with the developers.

The fact that Dragon has been able to produce such outstanding language technology is certainly due to the fact that our QA process is not separate from the development of the product but an integral part of it. For us, quality is something that is built into the development process from the first day of a new product release cycle.

It starts with the review of the specifications, then the builds go back and forth between development and QA. QA tests and identifies the problems - by manual and automated testing simulating the customer's use of the product. Development fixes them. QA verifies the bug fixes, performs regression tests, and tests newly incorporated features with each build, until all the required criteria for a release have been met.

In parallel to testing the functionality of the software itself, documentation, on line help, marketing collateral (the box, the brochures, the print ads, etc.) and, of course, web sites are all reviewed for technical accuracy, terminological consistency, stylistic adequacy, etc. All this happens usually under enormous time pressure, which is something that QA people need to handle maybe even better than people in other departments since not enough time typically means "less quality." But it is exactly our job to assure quality within critical timeframes and with limited resources.

5. What is the outcome of this QA process?
A product that offers the highest possible degree of quality under the given constraints. More specifically, it means a product that performs according to the specifications documented in the collateral and in the advertisements; a product that will enhance productivity with correct usage and in no case make the user lose data or functionality of other software; a product that is aesthetically packaged, accurately and understandably described, and - regarding international software - a product that does not seem to have been developed outside of the country where it will be used.

6. When do you know it's a "quality" product?
If, for example, a lawyer in Rome saves several hours every week by being able to dictate his letters into his PC rather than having to type them; if he can express himself with commands that seems natural and work as described; if he finds nothing odd or wrong in the documentation or on the web site (just more hints on how to increase his productivity by talking to his PC); and - last but not least - if he would never think that this product was made in Newton, Massachusetts rather than Italy, then I did my job right.

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