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Quality is Everyone’s Responsibility
My grandmother used to say, ‘There’s more than one way to bake a cake.’ It’s a softer version of the more famous idiom involving feline taxidermy, but for our purposes, it’s a better metaphor. You can bake a cake without some of the key ingredients like sugar or eggs and it is still technically a cake. It just won’t taste as good as my grandmother’s cake did. Similarly, in the software world, we could deploy a product that is technically free of defects and bugs but still provides a poor user experience. This is where we need to redefine the true meaning of quality.
If you’ve come this far on the journey with me, I hope the main takeaway has been everything we do keeps the user in mind. When I say quality, I’m speaking directly to the user experience. We need to remember that the purpose of our software is (usually) to help our user complete a task such as book a flight, transfer money, or buy diapers. The actual code is only as strong as the design and workflow allow it to be. Therefore, it’s important to buy into the theory that quality is everyone’s responsibility.
It's the product person who makes sure the interface is as intuitive as possible. It's the developer who ensures that the user is not seeing unhandled errors, and of course, it's the testers who represent the user. But the chain doesn’t stop there. The CIOs and CTOs are helping us deploy the right technology; the CFO is funding these projects and the CEO is ultimately responsible for the vision.
In this last video, I try to tie a bow on this series and give some words of wisdom on how we should address testing at the company level. Everyone has a part to play when it comes to delivering that quality user experience and allowing brands the digital confidence to conduct business on the web. Thanks for checking out my series, and I’ll see you all again soon.
