"There is a distinct lack of interest in testing in the public sector," he claims. "There's far more interest in the private sector.

"It is evident those organisations that have moved to Agile development factor testing into each iteration. Therefore, if things get tight [in time], they can be rapidly addressed, compared to trying to shave three or four months off at the end of a big project [when testing is cut].

It used to be quite common in government projects for the budget to be broken down into percentages for individual components such as testing. But methodologies have changed to a large degree. There's Agile and there's iterative, which encompasses such technologies as .NET and Java.

"Testing is an area of IT that has never been seen as sexy," the chief executive says. "It is about a group of people trying to break something and, as such, is almost considered as a negative force in systems analysis.

"It has become the poor cousin. But without it, all the good things will be undone if the reputation of what has been built suffers from poor quality control."