Question

A new retail product was released to production by your company. Shortly after the release it was apparent that there were numerous problems with the point of sale application. This resulted in a number of customer complaints and negative postings on social media encouraging people to take their business to your competitor. You have investigated the problems and have discovered that the production point of sale equipment is a later model than the model used in testing. The software functions correctly on the old version, but fails on the later model. Given this scenario, what is the root cause and what is the effect?

A. The root cause is the old equipment and the effect is the new equipment
B. The root cause is the customer complaints and the effect is the social media postings
C. The root cause is conducting the testing on the wrong version of the equipment and the effect is the customer complaints and postings
D. The root cause is the software failing on the later model and the effect is the customer complaints

Answer 1

The root cause is the mismatch between the test environment hardware and the production environment hardware, leading to software failure on the newer point of sale equipment. The effect is customer dissatisfaction and negative social media impact.

Step-by-step explanation:

Root Cause Analysis

The root cause of the problem is that testing was conducted on an obsolete version of the point of sale equipment rather than the updated model which was subsequently used in production. This oversight led to the software functioning improperly on the newer equipment. The effect of this root cause was a series of customer complaints and negative social media postings, encouraging people to take their business to a competitor.

This situation exemplifies why accurate testing environments are crucial for quality assurance. Testing on old equipment does not accurately predict how software will perform in a real-world production scenario, especially when that production environment uses updated technology.

The customer complaints and negative posts are not only a direct effect of the faulty software but also an indicator of potential loss of customer loyalty and revenue, which makes this problem significant for the business.