I just received a panicky call from my Father-In-Law.  He is a retired teacher and his state run website “accidently” put up every teachers: Name, Social Security Number and last known address on a public website.    He was incensed… “What should I do?”, “Didn’t anybody check it?”…..”You’re a QA person…How could this happen?”

Obviously, this is a huge mistake and certainly being in the Quality Assurance business this creates “real-world” discussion.  I can not imagine being part of the discussion and root cause analysis of the parties responsible for making this huge “quality assurance Defect”.  Notice I said, Quality Assurance Defect.

The organization certainly did not follow a defined processes (or that process was flawed.) where there were checks through the release of this information on a website.  In IT terms, we call them gates (exit and entry criteria) to allow this go to a production environment. 

What is the cost of this defect?  No one knows at this point (but it’s very high!!!) .……and  I will say….when I get into a discussion regarding the value of Quality Assurance for IT Projects………..it’s very valuable to have real life examples!!!