Quality: Not Just the End Product

TL;DR:

Quality breeds quality, and is more than the end product, instead, it is everything you do to get there.

'Quality': The Pinnacle of Buzzwords

The importance of a quality product doesn't need to be debated here, as it is preached from the tallest of mountains or the highest seat in the company. It is a paramount focus of our attention that is often sacrificed for speed and affordability. In the world of unlimited competition, you need to provide continuous value that is intuitively felt without the headache of poor performance, difficult user experience with unintuitive designs, and a plethora of bugs stifling the value provided.

Quality doesn't just happen overnight and isn't reserved for the QA Process at the end of the process. Quality begets quality and it starts from the inception of the idea/vision, the creation of a plan, and the strategy and process of execution. It is everything you do; and if not done with intention and clear purpose, you will find yourself in a mess that has compounded in complexity over time.

A quality product is a reflection of the quality of operations, processes, and checks and balances within a company. Quality goes beyond just the end result and starts at the beginning.

Why Leaders Need to Support Time for Quality

Feel free to skip this section if this title sounds obvious and you don't need to be sold on the implications of not taking the critical steps to ensure delivery confidence and long-term maintainability and scalability.

You don't have to look hard to find a plethora of examples where a lack of quality has cost a company millions, or someone has gotten hurt or killed. Extreme examples no doubt, but they occur.

Direct costs that can be incurred:

• Lost revenue due to software malfunctions or downtime
• Loss of customer trust and reputation
• Loss of valuable data
• Increased technical support costs
• Legal fees and settlements
• Increased development costs to fix the bug and prevent similar problems in the future
• Loss of future business opportunities

Indirect costs:

• Slower delivery on all future efforts due to the growing complexity of the system
• Frustrated personnel working in a complicated system
• More time providing support, less time creating new value
• Loss of knowledge if time isn't taken for documentation and curation.

Not taking the initiative to define upfront process, checks and balances, regular checkpoints, communication standards, iterative milestones, and standards and practices, then you are setting yourself up for a difficult journey and difficult emotions when you are stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Cross-Functional From the Beginning

Depending on the size of your operation, your first goal will be to assemble the minds that have an educated opinion of the opportunity or challenge, across all skillsets required for delivery, and let voices be heard. Share the vision, direction, and answer all the whys and empower the assembled cast to ideate, brainstorm, assess risks and obstacles, define the facts, plan and more. No one has the full picture, and getting the proper cross-functional team together will expose so much more than a team of product owners or siloed leaders. This team can define the feasibility of success, complexity of the ask, expose risks or potentially discover additional work required beforehand, and save you a mountain of time and gold if discovered later.

Quality Process at Every Phase

Building a quality product, whether physical or digital, requires strong attention to detail in every phase. In each phase, you need clarity on what is required in each, the inputs and outputs, and possess a shared understanding of what success looks like. You need to build process into your operations to empower the team to act as one unit, ease communication, reduce redundancy of effort and rework, and sequence the work in the most logical manner.

With defined processes, you have taken the first step towards continuous improvement of how you work and being able to measure behaviors in an impactful way. With consistent behavior and execution over a defined cadence (sprint or designated time-frame), you create the superpower of reflection and introspection and iterate toward your best working dynamic. Following process enables you to measure improvement/change in teams' performance over time and how each change affects output and quality. When you can measure how you work, you can improve how you work.

To reach your goals on a project basis you need quality standards, definitions of ‘done', clear collaboration guidelines, and qualitative and quantitative metrics.

Communication and Collaboration

It's impossible to reach the moon if some are shooting for the stars. To achieve a common goal, all teams must be aligned in their direction and have a clear vision, which should be consistently communicated and reviewed through regular check-ins. Working cross-functionally can lead to differing perspectives (that inevitably lead to greater ideas), but effective communication and collaboration are crucial for producing quality deliverables throughout the entire project lifecycle.

To work effectively between teams, it is necessary to establish healthy working relationships and teach others how to interact with your team. This includes defining how to receive new requests, collecting and sharing information, and setting alignment checkpoints. A culture of quality should be prioritized, supported by mutual trust and respect, and fostering open dialogue without fear of negative consequences.

Build Consistency with Automation

We are living in a time where automation is getting easier with or without engineering support, enabling us to multiply our value by negating routine tasks and delivering consistent results. When you sense a theme or pattern of working, allow yourself or team to slow down so you can speed up. Give time to build an automated solution for repeat activities. Automation allows for:

• Increased efficiency eliminating the need for repetitive manual tasks and saving valuable time
• Improved accuracy resulting in fewer errors and more reliable results
• Consistent output that meets defined criteria as originally defined
• Resource optimization and allowing team members to focus on higher-value activities that require human creativity or expertise
• Cost savings and faster delivery
• Better compliance with ensuring that tasks are completed in accordance to whatever requirements you need to meet. Thus reducing risk.

Overall, automating routine tasks can improve productivity, quality, accuracy, consistency, and compliance while saving time and reducing costs. In short, automation pays dividends in the long-term.

Feedback Loops as Standard

Solicit continuous feedback and embrace it with open arms, regardless if you agree with it. When you are in the thick of it, it can be hard to see through the fog of deep focus. Feedback loops are an essential component for improving quality. You want to catch defects, potential issues, or new opportunities at the earliest point possible. The further out the project goes, the more difficult change becomes and the more risk incurred to meet the deadline. Leave wiggle room in your roadmap for adapting the plan

Types of feedback loops:

• Team Feedback Loops - Team members can share feedback with each other on a regular basis. Focusing on team dynamics, communication, and individual contributions to the project. Can be conducted in various forms such as team retrospectives, surveys, focus groups, user testing, etc.
• User Feedback Loops - Test with real users whenever possible - beforehand (assess needs/wants), during (design walk-through), and for your MVP (user acceptance testing). Use it to refine and improve the product to better meet the needs and expectations of the users.
• Process Feedback Loops - Identify areas for improvement, streamline processes, reduce inefficiencies or look for opportunities to automate.
• Performance Feedback Loops - We all have blind spots and it takes empathetic peers and leadership to bring them to our attention. This feedback is used for recognition and to raise awareness of new learning opportunities. This can be a formal review/feedback process or at any time it is warranted.
• Stakeholder Feedback Loops - Check in with those who have a vested interest in the success of the project. Ensure the project is aligned with their expectations and identify potential risks or issues that will need to be addressed. These can take the form of stakeholder interviews, progress reports, or governance meetings.

Use as many forms of feedback from varying sources to inform decision-making and how to take action. Use feedback to continuously improve performance, deliver faster, with high attention to quality in all areas.

The Role of Leadership

The role of leadership is to promote a culture of quality and the importance of providing adequate training and resources to support it. Leadership rarely provides primary value and instead, are catalysts to affect increasing value delivery in the direction that meets the vision. Leaders do this by:

• Setting vision and direction
• Setting expectations around a culture of quality
• Hiring the right talent with the right motivations and emotional intelligence
• Implementing quality practices and standards
• Measuring and monitoring quality metrics
• Supporting the feedback culture - encouraging open and constructive communication

The Importance of the Process

Long-term goals and roadmaps are important, but they are always dynamic and shifting over time. They should be allowed to adapt when necessary as more facts are known. It is better to create short-term actions with checkpoints and measurements, then measure against these goals to track and manage the work.

Projects and processes need to be defined, and when defined, they need metrics. What is measured, gets managed, and what is managed, gets done.

Conclusion

In summary, the concept of quality goes far beyond just the end product. It involves a focus on every aspect of the development process, from the inception of the idea to the final implementation. Building a culture of quality involves cross-functional collaboration, attention to detail, communication and collaboration, automation, and continuous feedback. Leaders play an important role in promoting a culture of quality by setting the vision, hiring the right talent, implementing quality practices and standards, measuring and monitoring quality metrics, and supporting a feedback culture. By prioritizing quality at every stage of the process, organizations can create high-quality products that meet the needs of their users, and ultimately drive success and growth.

GOOD LUCK!