In my experience...QR magnifies QA

In a prior role, I had the privilege of leading a software Quality Assurance team with highly-talented people who cared about our work and ensured we delivered a quality product. Like most software QA teams, we were the last big ‘gate’ before major / minor / dot / bug-fix releases could be sent to production. Ironically, given the purpose of our team, the timeframes we fought for to do our testing in were almost always condensed at the last minute beyond what we felt was minimally reasonable. Of course, this was done to prevent having to push the committed delivery date, even when teams earlier in the process missed their dates. Such is the QA life!?

Since that time, some of my consulting has been for clients with quality teams and initiatives, whether they be in software, contact centers, product management, learning & development or program delivery. While there are usually multiple perspectives on what quality means for a given product, service, department or company, most of the time the ‘accepted’ definition mirrors the perspective of whoever has the power and makes the decisions. This is to be expected given the nature of status, influence and accountability within organizations, and it certainly makes each client I walk into interesting and unique. The perception of quality by senior leadership becomes the quality reality for an organization.

In many of the companies I work with the term ‘quality assurance’ has a dichotomous connotation. It’s supposed to be helpful…but it may not always seem that way. Not in the sense that the work done by a quality team is bad or irrelevant, rather that their purpose is to find opportunities for improvement (i.e., where was quality missed and by who) and point them out so they can be resolved and mitigated in the future. Organizations that have the most successful quality functions, whether it’s a dedicated QA team or a set of processes meant to infuse quality into various areas of the organization, are those able to balance what quality is and what it can be.

In my experience, quality recognition magnifies the impact and acceptance of quality assurance.?I wish I had been a little more enlightened about this back when I led the software QA team. I probably would have been a better leader not only for that team but also within the company. QA will always be about ‘finding defects’, whether in software, products, services or processes to improve an organization’s offerings and operations, but recognition of good quality can be just as important because of the impact it has on people, morale and culture.

Interestingly, on our QA team, while we tracked in great detail each and every test case we ran and bug we found, we rarely took a step back to recognize how much better the final product was because of our part in the process. Instead, we spent energy examining what we missed, rather than pausing briefly to celebrate what we caught. Again, this is the nature of traditional QA. I’ve since learned that there can be a healthier balance between assurance and recognition, not only on the quality evaluation side but also on the side of those whose work is the target of evaluation.

I believe we would have performed even better and delivered a higher quality product if we had implemented recognition of quality into our standard practices. As with any rewards and recognition program, it only works if it exists.

Anytime I work with clients now and there’s a quality-related component to the work, even tangentially, we make sure an element of quality recognition is included in the final outcome.?

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The “In my experience…” article series began in late 2018 and is based on the experiences and observations of Brett Simpson, Managing Director of Elevate Simply, during his 20+ years of leadership experience in large and small organizations, and as an entrepreneur, advisor and investor. In 2021 the series began including refreshed versions of previous articles, noted by “(v2)”, in addition to new articles.