Happy World Quality Day 2020 – let’s talk about creating customer value

Today is World Quality Day 2020 and in alignment with theme for this year “creating customer value” and because for Bosch one of strategic focal points is focusing on customers I want to share some readings and thought.

Customer-focused organizations like Bosch have a culture of creating value for their customers by innovating and improving products, services and processes. It is important to us to understand that we need customer-centric quality culture that helps us to:

• Recognize that it is the customer, not us that defines what quality means
• Understand product and service quality through their customers eyes
• Share our quality performance with customers
• Collaborate with customers to improve product/service quality and resolve problems

The comments below are mainly based books of Robert C. Martin (Uncle Bob), first chairman of the Agile Alliance.

Maybe as software people you know it that Snowbird meeting defines not only Agile Manifesto but also customer bill of rights that includes the following:

• Customers have the right to an overall plan and to know what can be accomplished when and at what cost.
• Customers have the right to get the most possible value out of every iteration.
• Customers have the right to see progress in a running system, proven to work by passing repeatable tests that they specify.
• Customers have the right to change their minds, to substitute functionality, and to change priorities without paying exorbitant costs.
• Customers have the right to be informed of schedule and estimate changes in time to choose how to alter the scope to meet the required date.
• Customers may cancel at any time and be left with a useful working system reflecting investment to date.

The word “customer” in this context refers to businesspeople in general. This includes true customers, managers, executives, project leaders, and anyone else who might carry responsibility for schedule and budget or who will pay for and benefit from the execution of the system. I have seen many times especially in product development that developer say, we do not have customers. Are you sure? 

I have seen many claims that up-front planning is not part of Agile development. Claims that we do not have budget, we do not need reporting. The very first customer right belies that claim. Of course the business needs a plan. Of course that plan must include schedule and cost. And of course that plan should be as accurate and precise as practical.

Working with customer, involving them in development process gives high value, because at the and software is changeable, requirements are not in stone, they can be changed over time and at the end you may receive something totally different from the initial definition but aligned and paid by the customer. 

The bill of right of customer is closely linked to the developer one, so we need to look on them together: 

• Developers have the right to know what is needed with clear declarations of priority.
• Developers have the right to produce high-quality work at all times.
• Developers have the right to ask for and receive help from peers, managers, and customers.
• Developers have the right to make and update their own estimates.
• Developers have the right to accept their responsibilities instead of having them assigned.

I want to comment some of the right right. First is clear - customer defines priority of the requirement but the second many times is misinterpreted. Developers have the right to do good work. The business has no right to tell developers to cut corners or do low-quality work. Or, to say this differently, the business has no right to force developers to ruin their professional reputations or violate their professional ethics. Also for me professionals accept work, they are not assigned work.

I want also to discuss some data from this year World Quality Report:

At Bosch we have a lots of processes and defining quality goals is a part of every project, but my question is do the developers know and care about quality goals? Can you share your opinion regarding that?

It is craftsmanship and professionalism regarding expertise, test automation and test strategy and processes. But for time and testing environment we need to fight. And the fight is not with PO or Project Manager, the fight is with budget. I want to quote statement that I fully support of Robert C. Martin from his book Clean Agile:

“Developers should not ask authorization for writing tests. They should not have separate tasks for unit tests or refactoring. They should not have separate tasks for making a feature production ready. These technical activities should be factored into the development of any feature. They are not optional. “ 

Can you share your opinion? What customer means for you and how you incorporate customer feedback in your development process?

At the end I want to state: I'm responsible for Quality! Are you also feel responsible for Quality?

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