Owning The Quality

Organizational approach to address quality in software delivery,

1. Resemble traditional factory set-up. The maker & quality are 2 separate component.
2. Engineering team accountable for the quality.

The first approach is unlikely to motivate and drive the quality mindset into the engineering team.

The QA team may find the same defect twice by a different engineer at a later time because there is no incentive to write test coverage.

Engineer’s goal now turning to getting QA sign-off. Worse to happen is people being rewarded by how many defects they close. Not how fewer defects are produced.

Lack of quality care in software development can have destructive long-term effects on both culture and systems.

An ambitious engineering team will invest in bringing quality to the left possible, like security.

Design & code review will start to be an important activity, testing strategy will get better & quality mindset will take off naturally during code writing.

Having the right metrics in an engineering team will help nurture good quality practice. Declining defects rate over time, safe & faster lead time to production, for example.

The QA team (if to exist) should be small and empowered enough to provide value through coaching the engineering team, screening edge cases, and identifying potential gaps with the business.

Engineering should own the quality if they care.