{"id":232,"date":"2010-10-25T20:56:04","date_gmt":"2010-10-26T03:56:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/?p=232"},"modified":"2010-10-25T20:56:04","modified_gmt":"2010-10-26T03:56:04","slug":"who-owns-quality-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/who-owns-quality-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Who owns quality?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I think I\u2019m finally caught up and recovered from my brief North American tour last week. While it was fun to present at two conferences plus a customer talk in four days, I missed out on a the second day of both conferences, as well as the opportunity to meet nearly as many people as I would have liked.<\/p>\n

I thought I\u2019d write a bit about something I heard more than once last week. I summed up my reaction in a tweet<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n

I forget how often some companies blame testers for escaped bugs. It’s not their fault.<\/p>\n

<\/font><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

My flippant follow up to the \u201cbugs are tester\u2019s fault\u201d statement is typically \u201cHow can it be test\u2019s fault? We weren\u2019t the ones who put the bugs there in the first place\u201d, but there\u2019s some truth to the remark. Think of it this way \u2013 If testers are responsible for letting bugs \u201cslip\u201d through to customers, you have an engineering system where programmers are paid to insert bugs into the software, and where testers are penalized for not finding all of the needles in the haystack. <\/p>\n

That doesn\u2019t seem right. Delivering quality software isn\u2019t a game where programmers insert bugs for testers to chase after \u2013 everyone on the team has to have some skin in the game on delivering quality (and value) to the customer<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also been a lot of buzz recently about the \u201ccost of testing\u201d, where testers (or teams of testers) attempt to justify the investment in testing. I have to admit that this bugs me \u2013 I don\u2019t believe in the cost of testing \u2013 I believe in the cost of<\/em> quality<\/em>, and that the cost (and effort) is shared among the entire software team.<\/p>\n

In hwtsam<\/a>, I wrote:<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

Many years ago when I would ask the question, \u201cwho owns quality,\u201d the answer would nearly always be \u201cThe test team owns quality.\u201d Today, when I ask this question, the answer is customarily \u201cEveryone owns quality.\u201d While this may be a better answer to some, W. Mark Manduke of SEI has written: \u201cWhen quality is declared to be everyone\u2019s responsibility, no one is truly designated to be responsible for it, and quality issues fade into the chaos of the crisis du jour.\u201d He concluded that \u201c\u2026when management truly commits to a quality culture, everyone will, indeed, be responsible for quality.\u201d(STQE Magazine. Nov\/Dec 2003 (Vol. 5, Issue 6))<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Culture is hard to change, but it\u2019s imperative for making quality software. If your programmers \u201cthrow code over the wall\u201d and are surprised when the test team doesn\u2019t find bugs<\/em>, you should rethink your work environment (or resolve yourself to the fact that your job is to clean up the programmers mess and that quality is nowhere near your control).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I think I\u2019m finally caught up and recovered from my brief North American tour last week. While it was fun to present at two conferences plus a customer talk in four days, I missed out on a the second day of both conferences, as well as the opportunity to meet nearly as many people as…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-allposts"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=232"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}