It is time to raise the profile of the Quality profession! With Technology being at the heart of every brand, we need professionals who understand all technology domains but have incredible empathy for the customer–sounds like quality.
What holds Quality status back? Here are my top five reasons –what are yours?
1.Giving status from the ground up
My favorite tester ever starts every conversation from all the steps that were taken. Every time I interrupt and say, “start with the outcome, I need to know if we have a big problem or no problem at all.”
2.Getting stuck on semantics
What is this silly conversation about “checking” vs. “testing?” I understand the difference… but in the scheme of business, this is semantics.
3.Spending too much time on imperfections that don’t matter
The greatest strength of a tester is the overwhelming desire to find the truth –but if the problem is a C priority with little or no business impact, then mark this as something to come back to and move on to what matters most now.
4.Not building relationships with other teams
Architects and Information Security are two of the biggest allies to Quality. They need people embedded in functional and project teams to enforce their standards –yet, very few quality professionals invite their architecture colleagues out to coffee…
5.Accepting a position at the end of the line
When dates slip and full, end to end testing gets delayed, why do quality teams simply accept it? As a quality leader, I set expectations up front and negotiatebefore the quality team falls on their sword.