Most organizations focus their quality efforts on testing alone. But in today’s software delivery landscape, that’s not enough. 
Code quality isn’t just created in QA—it begins at requirements and continues through design, development, deployment, and beyond. 

That’s why Narwal created NQVC – the Quality Value Chain Assessment Framework—a structured, intelligent model that enables organizations to embed, measure, and optimize quality at every stage of the SDLC. 

The Problem: Quality Is Treated as a Phase, Not a Lifecycle 

In fast-paced Agile and DevOps environments, development teams often push forward with rapid releases, but: 

• Requirements are vague or undocumented 

• Design artifacts lack approval workflows 

• Code merges with minimal review 

• QA teams are pulled in too late 

• Defect root causes go untracked 

• Production issues are siloed from feedback loops 

This fragmented approach leads to delays, defect leakage, rework, and growing technical debt—all while creating a false sense of “done.” 

The Narwal Solution: NQVC 

NQVC (Narwal Quality Value Chain Assessment Framework) is a comprehensive quality governance model that aligns people, processes, and technology around one shared goal: engineering quality from start to finish. 

It combines AI-driven analytics, best-practice controls, and lifecycle visibility across six key checkpoints: 

NQVC Quality Coverage Areas 

🔹 Quality of Requirements 

Automated knowledge management and requirement validation ensures clarity, traceability, and early defect prevention. 

🔹 Quality of Design 

NQVC enforces structured design documentation, acceptance criteria, and architecture reviews—ensuring that the system is testable and maintainable. 

🔹 Code Quality Assurance 

It integrates static code analysis, code review automation, and CI hooks to validate merges in real-time. 

🔹 Testing Strategy Optimization 

Combining automation metrics, defect density, and coverage analytics, NQVC calibrates test strategies continuously for both functional and non-functional testing. 

🔹 Traceability from Requirements to Release 

Using impact analysis and test-to-requirement mapping, NQVC ensures changes are validated across dependencies—reducing regression risk. 

🔹 Production Quality Monitoring 

It closes the feedback loop by monitoring defect trends, MTTR, and post-release stability—fueling continuous improvement and future planning. 

Real Results: Business Impact 

Enterprises that implemented NQVC saw: 

• 📈 40% improvement in release readiness 

• 📉 35% reduction in post-production defects 

• ⏱️ 50% decrease in triage and defect RCA time 

• 🔁 Faster feedback cycles and clearer quality ownership across roles 

Success Story: 
A Fortune 100 retail enterprise used NQVC to standardize quality workflows across three Agile product streams. Within two quarters, they saw a 22% drop in critical defect leakage and a 30% improvement in test case relevance and reuse. 

Enterprise-Ready. DevOps-Aligned. 

NQVC integrates with tools across your delivery pipeline: 

• ALM & Work Management: JIRA, Azure DevOps, Rally 

• Source Control & CI/CD: GitHub, Bitbucket, Jenkins, GitLab 

• Static Code Tools: SonarQube, Checkmarx 

• Testing Platforms: Tosca, Selenium, JUnit, Postman 

• Monitoring: New Relic, Splunk, AppDynamics 

It provides dashboards, scorecards, and KPIs to quantify quality across teams, applications, and releases. 

AI-Powered Insights & Automation 

NQVC uses machine learning to uncover trends and recommend improvements: 

• Predictive defect analytics 

• Risk-based test selection 

• RCA clustering by module/owner 

• Alerting on SLA violations across the chain 

With NQVC, you don’t just track quality—you optimize it. 

Why NQVC Matters Now 

Speed without quality is risk. Quality without visibility is guesswork. 

NQVC brings both. 
It shifts quality left, right, and everywhere in between—turning it from a final checklist to a measurable, manageable, and scalable discipline.