Quality-Value: Heuristic or Oracle?

The other week James Thomas wrote down some thoughts related to “Quality is value to some person”. I added some diverse thoughts - a mini-brain dump. This post is an expansion on one of those thoughts.

Start point

I made the assertion that the heuristic/statement (“quality is value to some person”) had been primarily used in a software testing context as a tool to illustrate that stakeholders are the gatekeepers of quality and not necessarily testers.

To me this is ok - but ultimately not a proactive approach helping the team, company or organisation work out how to delight it’s current and potential customers with good/acceptable/superior value and quality.

Point to explore

The point I made on James’ blog that I want to expand on is:

“4. In what scope is the “quality is value to some person” used in SW testing? I don’t know if it really matches Jerry’s original intent. I think it has been used to find a responsible stakeholder to discuss test results & objectives with, and probably also to aid testers to explain that they are not the sole arbiters of quality.  

4.1. I read the intent (from Jerry’s QSM) as highlighting a relationship and a perspective (i.e. subjective rather than objective) - which by nature can’t (usually) be static. I haven’t really seen/read of anyone applying it from this perspective to SW testing. I wonder how it would look…”

So, the question I will explore- if this is a transient and subjective statement - what use can it have to software testing or software development as a whole? I make some claims (statements and opinions) and questions - partly re-anchoring the context in which the statement* could be used:

1. Who is making the statement*?
2. When is it useful to make the statement*?
3. To what scope does it apply?
4. It’s bigger than software testing

Who is making the statement*?

I assert that it makes no sense for only certain people in a development team or project to have this view (“quality is value to some person”) - therefore, this is a team or project view of quality, or preferably a team together with a product owner or even customer view on quality.

This starts to imply a synchronised view on acceptable goals for a product, or feature, or vertical slice of a feature - as a goal for the team/group rather than individuals using it as a reminder (or in the worst case a defensive and passive position).

When is it useful to make the statement*?

I assert it is a useful reminder at the start of work (goals of a product, or feature) - these may be preliminary goals used in a prototyping activity or a hypothesis on what a customer might want. Doing this at the start is establishing a common goal for the team (or project or program, etc). This is not a statement useful for gatekeeping but useful for goal alignment - alignment of subjective views if you will.

To what scope does it apply?

I assert this applies to the whole development and delivery chain. Therefore, this implies that synchronisation between development and delivery teams (or even a DevOps set-up) would be desirable. Again, the alignment is about aligning common goals, not gatekeeping.

It’s bigger than software testing

Hopefully, this point is obvious?

Applying the statement* to product development (and delivery) I assert that it soon becomes clear(?) that it is much more than software testing and should be running through the whole chain. It doesn’t need to be a defence mechanism used by testers if alignment on goals has been achieved within the team, program, organisation, company.

Flip side? From Heuristic to Oracle

Suppose individuals or teams are using the statement* as a reminder/defence mechanism to illustrate that one or more stakeholders need to take a view on quality - what could this mean? I’d interpret it as a symptom of the team/organisation and its maturity with regards to delivering synchronised development & deployment quality. 

Another way to look at it: it’s a canary call for silos and local-optimisations. You could say it could be used as an oracle for spotting an organisational problem! More on that in another post…

*Statement: "Quality is value to some person"