[Yhippa]

One financial services company I worked at a long time ago was getting caught up in the Lean hype. We did process maps of nearly everything including our dev process. They put a big red circle around the QA piece noting that it was a candidate for elimination since it was not value-add.

That is parts like coding and deployment were necessary because they actually were important and helped move business ideas to the customer. QA to them was a redundant step. This coming from a shop that avoided automated testing because it was too expensive.

I was disappoint. QA to me is insurance against being human (which we all are). The ended up not getting rid of QA but the fact that they seriously considered it was shocking.

[lojack]

If the team considers automated testing waste then they truly are missing the point of Lean. I disagree with you on the fact that having a QA step could be considered waste. Note that this isn't the same as calling QA waste.

IMO QA is something that should be included throughout the task lifecycle. Sure, after a task is marked as complete there should be some sort of usability testing, but that isn't the sole job of QA. They should be working before tasks are even started by defining the exit criteria and writing integration tests. Giving QA its own step is wasteful because its effectively pigeonholing the job.