Council Post: Why Tech Companies Should Revolve Around Quality After Crisis

A quality-focused approach helps companies gain a competitive advantage. Quality assurance isn’t limited to software testing services anymore. It goes beyond covering a maximum number of error scenarios. In an effective team, it is always the area of common responsibility. During and after the crisis, product quality becomes paramount, though adopting a new vision of a quality-focused tech team can be a true challenge for a company.

The Ever-Changing Meaning Of Quality

A management strategy that strictly outlines areas of expertise for each team member tends to fail user experience. Instead of a smoothly flowing development process, there are separate pieces of work stitched together into a final product. That doesn’t always work well.

Metaphors aside, sharing responsibilities allows for fewer conflicts and less misunderstanding between teams when it comes to cross-department communication. Developers are still responsible for code quality, but keeping in mind the nuances of a marketing strategy, for example, lets them modify code accordingly at the early stages, without many quarrels.

A quality-oriented team is a business-oriented team. It helps a company grow, provide more efficient customer care and deliver a better user experience. To achieve this, changes in company structure aren’t always necessary. It is more about changes in mindset.

Crisis And Reevaluation Of Priorities 

I often say that quality is essential for a quick business reboot during and after an economic decline. Let’s take the latest events as an example to illustrate this point.

People are deprived of some essential things, and face-to-face communication is on that list. The lack of business and personal meetings completely changes the business ecosystem and routines. People need high-quality software that can compensate for offline communication in both work and private matters.

When you have no other options but video calls, the drawbacks of communication platforms become more obvious. Users start to pay more attention to the features, while some applications cannot withstand the load. And there it goes: The increased demand requires enhanced quality, which in turn raises software standards.

During uncertain times, individuals and companies start to carefully choose what to pay for. Lagging software and programs with average functionality that come at rather high prices are the first to experience the impact of cost-saving.

Build A Quality-Focused Team

The easiest way is to hire people who care about the idea of your company. Enterprises often try to promote workplaces with corporate goodies, while specialists are looking for a place to achieve their ambitions.

This is not about giving empty motivational speeches and appealing to abstract values. Stay more grounded about your employees’ inner motivation. Things will work out if you are certain that you can offer employees opportunities for personal and professional growth and that their expectations match the company’s goals.

Let’s say you interview a person for a software engineer position, and they want to become a project manager someday. Can you use their motivation to benefit the company? Can you create an environment where reaching this goal will be possible? If the answer to both questions is yes, everyone wins.

People want to be responsible and involved. They want to contribute to something meaningful and get an advantage — professional and personal growth. In this case, sharing common values may be more important than years of working experience.

Communicate And Educate

Tech teams should understand how their solutions will impact customer experience, revenue and company growth. Otherwise, they will deal with tasks out of context.

When the development team communicates with the QA, customer care, marketing and other departments, each becomes more involved in the overall process. Developers don’t only analyze code, but also suggest enhancements for product logic at the early stages. QA engineers take a user experience (UX) angle and perform customer-oriented testing. Marketing specialists realize which features can be implemented and when.

Developers and UX designers may still disagree upon what quality means, but communication makes it easier to promote changes that will benefit the product.

Mentorship is the other way to keep everyone involved. Leaders who share their expertise and communicate values to the team build a devoted community that is oriented toward common values.

Daily meetings become more than reporting on the work that was done. They turn into brainstorming sessions that result in new hypotheses and effective solutions. When specialists from different niches work together to reach a common goal, they are more likely to discover an uncommon idea than if they each focused only on their area of expertise.

Exceed User Expectations

Look for solutions that are better than what your competitors offer. In other words, climb above set market standards. This is achievable by experiencing a product the way real customers do.

QA engineers know how to mimic user experience and apply this skill to detect the weak spots in software. Also, try reading reviews; they often help enhance product features. Just don’t bite off more than you can chew, and don’t promise features you can’t implement properly.

Bottom Line

Quality is like a big jigsaw puzzle, and each department must put their piece in a proper place. Out of the context, pieces may look good even upside down, but to complete the puzzle, each piece has to fit.

Challenging circumstances force businesses to reconsider their understanding of and approaches to product quality. To rise above the competition, a company should create software that meets clients’ expectations not only on paper, but in real life, too. That’s when quality finally becomes the priority.