After 20 years of leading AD teams, I'll be transitioning into leading my companies shared software QA team. This is a very large company (Fortune 50) where IT budgets are determined by LOB. The AD teams own the budgets and allocate funds to shared QA org. Our annual planning cycle starts in July and closes in November for the subsequent year. The problem is multi-faceted:
- As part of annual planning the AD teams are not allocating or under allocating $ to support QA
- QA leadership needs to beat the bushes for $ to support IT projects (e.g. allocate $ to our resource role)
- Constantly battling for money means the only resources supported are the ones specifically budgeted to support testing a new development project - we can't build a center of expertise, invest in tools, take training, improve processes, and ultimately improve quality due to funding contraints.
Are there any best practices in defining a standard allocation model? For example, X% of AD budget funds core QA resources (FTE, Key Consultants - including resources for CoE) and Y% funds project related work. Internally we're calling this a "blended model".
All thoughts are appreciated.
