Creating “Quality Mindset”

Quality and Deliveries are the most talked about topics in software organizations, even though these are must to have annual Targets/Goals/KRAs along with other defined goals in any organization.

Teams try hard, year-on-year to meet the desired quality goals by working on QA (proactively strengthening reviews & processes, knowing customer needs and pain areas better, learnings from history, understanding big picture before development etc.) and QC (reactive like, increasing automation & test coverage, strengthening testing cycles and test processes etc.)

But putting conscious efforts to create a “Quality Mindset”, can really do wonders and can lead us to achieving sustainable results towards better quality of products.

I have experienced it in the past, “Quality Mindset” creates long-lasting positive impact on improving and maintaining overall product quality. But changing mindset is one of the most difficult tasks and is a long process, which needs consistent efforts, active participation of stakeholders, review feedback and of course lot of patience.

I am listing down some initiatives we took in the past and got succeed up to some extent. Based on the feasibility and your organization’s needs, you may choose a few from list or identify new actions towards creating “Quality Mindset” in your team.

To Create the “Quality Mindset”, make your teams understand that –

1.???Why Quality is so important to the organization? Consequences of having Bad Quality Product? Bad quality not only causes a huge cost but is also an irreversible reputation loss to organization, which results in losing existing customers, high risk for customer retention and expansions.

2.???Always remember that “Good Quality is Free but Bad Quality is very expensive.”

3.???Everyone is responsible for better quality, and he/she must take the ownership.

4.???Come out of your shells, know your customers better, their actual needs? What does your developed code mean to them? Their pain areas? Collaborate more often with customer success / product teams to feel the customer experience.

5.???Understand big picture, Understand WHAT & WHY well before you think about HOW.

6.???Setting up high standards and no tolerance for “CHALA HAI” attitude at any level.

7.???Don’t let go the opportunities to Celebrate the Success & learnings from failures.

8.???Most importantly and consistently, spread awareness through display boards, R&R, events & guest talks and even setting up the right expectations during hiring & ramping up a new member in the team.

Thank you for your time in reading this, your thoughts will be well appreciated.