Test Leadership Congress 2020

Within a 2000+ employees company, it is very challenging to ensure that the needed quality is delivered to clients. Clients should have the same experience using the final product from release to release. My motivation for creating a metric started with a famous definition of quality by Jerry Weinberg, "Quality Is Value To Some Person" enriched later on by Michael Bolton with "at some time" and by James Bach with "who matters": "Quality Is Value To Some Person, At Some Time, Who Matters".

If we will not concretize and align upfront on the "values to persons who matter today", we will miss looking at our releases quality in a common way and taking the needed joint decisions. During the presentation the need for this new measurement will be discussed with the actions taken by all builders and consumers of the releases based on those measurements.

Release Quality Progress - Before releasing: The value oriented metric will be described, along with its visualization for better exploitation during release construction by all stakeholders.
Release Quality In Use - After releasing: The means for a feedback loop once the release is used by clients will be described, again with its corresponding visualization for better exploitation by all stakeholders.

The success of those metrics can be seen in how product development teams and management are relying on this data today to take the appropriate decisions regarding our releases:
- As a release board, do we release now?
- As a product owner, what did my team miss while building the product?
- As a client services consultant, what is the health of the release to anticipate impacts on my client project?

I will show how all teams worked together and were able to take joint decisions to achieve the targeted quality expected by clients.

Key learnings:
1. Quality of a product does not have a meaning without knowing the concerned persons who matter today and understanding very well what they value in the product.
2. A measure and corresponding visualization can be applied in a testers work place to drive the construction of a release based on the targeted values.
3. A measure and corresponding visualization can be applied in a testers work place to drive the feedback loop on a release based on the targeted values.