Quality as an Integral Part of Product Development: Nice-to-have or Essential?

Advertising and product positioning have transformed tangibly over the last few years. Now, we see more “affordable, “fresh,” and “personalized” products rather than “high-quality” and “long-lasting” products. This trend comes from the widely used “succeed fast” (or “fail fast”) method that focuses on gathering feedback and adapting quickly enough to align with customer needs on the fly.

Given that, trade-offs in initial parameters like quality are considered acceptable as the product gets frequent and iterative updates with fixes. For example, video game providers regularly launch raw versions in the scope of alpha or beta releases, and this approach has already become the new normal for users.

The “succeed fast/fail fast” method proves efficiency in the early stages of the product lifecycle. Yet, when it comes to product expansion, the structure and processes that work on a small scale become bottlenecks. At this pace, technical debt slowly but progressively builds up as the product grows. This will not lead to immediate or catastrophic failures but results in a gradual loss of control over the product, its technical excellence, predictability, and the ability to manage and meet audience expectations. In simpler terms, delaying scaling and infusing quality is like taking on credit – manageable at first sight but costly in the long run.

CrowdStrike Update: Scale of Impact

A recent software update by CrowdStrike disrupted the entire Windows system, leading to one of the largest IT failures in history. At first glance, it looked like the root of this issue must have been either bad expertise or a bad decision made by a support engineer. In fact, the truth is that the process was not designed to cover the possible impact of changes on a large scale.

Speaking of startup products, there is nothing wrong with relying on development testing when pushing a quick update. But the thing is – as your product evolves and gets complicated, your processes and priorities should change in the same way. Otherwise, you may face tangible consequences. For instance, the CrowdStrike outrage cost Fortune 500 companies over  $5.4bn, while CrowdStrike itself has lost 22% of its stock market value since the incident.

It’s important not to forget that product expansion is multi-dimensional, including audience growth, technical evolvement, and maturity of internal processes that grant expected results. All these are parts of a complicated software evolution strategy and would not work separately. So, once the initial version proves its value, the concept of its development should include attributes that stabilize the audience, keep loyalty to the product, and be able to react to changing demands. It is no longer possible to develop a solution with a 1M audience following the same principles as for 10K loyal users.

And here comes a decision point that distinguishes durable product visioners from brave ones. The first group takes all the necessary steps to align their processes with the business’s ambitions, while the second waits to make changes until the consequences are too expensive to ignore. If you’re in the first group, you probably focus on quality for a while. If you’re following the second route, it may be a good time to ask yourself whether your initial success has turned into inertia that prevents necessary changes from happening.

If you feel like it might have, it’s better to address not only the consistency of the marketing strategy but engineering practices as well. Here also lies another trick. Businesses rather focus on preparing strategies for worst-case scenario, while planning in case of success remains out of attention. However, a clear understanding of what you need to do if your audience grows tenfold will help you reach desirable and expected results without challenges or hidden pitfalls.

From Fast Delivery to Fast High-Quality Delivery

When a business recognizes the need for change, it often has tons of plans and commitments in place. Their volume grows so quickly that implementing them all requires a complete re-engineering of existing processes. For some businesses, it’s an unacceptable price to pay. Hence, they opt for a softer approach and gradually modify processes on the go, minimizing disruption to existing operations and teams.

Here come the questions many teams face when considering a transformation journey:

• How to evolve without affecting or stopping current business?
• How to keep pace with product evolution and quality improvement at the same time?
• How to introduce crucial updates to the development process and not disrupt it?

In Sigma Software’s consulting practice, we use two strategies that have the same goal of helping businesses improve the quality of processes and products – Quality Assistance and Quality Transformation. However, each of the strategies works differently in order to conform to the development processes an organization already follows. Quality Assistance offers targeted support to enhance ongoing processes for more agile teams, while Quality Transformation is more complex and provides a comprehensive overhaul to reshape the entire quality framework.

Quality Assistance

This approach is actively being promoted by Atlassian and is the best fit for compact and flexible teams that constantly experiment with their products. Its key difference lies in the integration of quality best practices directly into the running processes through:

1. Performing careful, non-invasive analysis of the existing processes, daily routines, and tools being used by the team;
2. Benchmarking them against the transformation goals and identifying strong and weak points within the process;
3. Planning step-by-step changes and agreeing on them with all the stakeholders participating in the transformation to eliminate risks of disrupting the flow;
4. Introducing quality experts as “player coaches” integrated into the development process to take over quality-related tasks, make pairwise work sessions with experts, and share knowledge across the team.

As the player coaches gradually introduce updates to a company’s working routine, they make sure they are followed by each team member. In most cases, changes do not affect the team structure as the cross-functional experts use the interchangeable responsibilities distribution principle to parallel skills improvement with operations. As a part of this process, coaches also conduct training on the required aspects of quality, demonstrate positive dynamics in efficiency, and transfer ownership to the team so they can manage and extend the new workflow as needed.

Thus, the Quality Assistance strategy focuses more on understanding the maturity of existing processes in the context of transformation, envisioning right changes, and helping the teams not only integrate new approaches into their work but also understand and adopt them.

Quality Transformation

When we work with larger teams that use more complex and formalized approaches, we usually recommend they consider wider transformations based on process areas. Since the potential impact of these changes could be significant, our team uses the Quality Transformation strategy to make sure we thoroughly prepare for them. Typically, the project scenario goes as follows:

1. The process starts by gathering all the available information on current business goals, pain points, quality and process issues, client feedback, and team observations. Every piece of this is valuable input that helps quality experts create a proper vision of an end state as a result of the transformation.
2. When the vision is ready, dedicated consultants review existing processes and artifacts. They also interview the team and stakeholders to understand the current process landscape.
3. Then, our consulting experts develop a transformation vision. This vision explains what can be achieved, how it can be accomplished, what the required budget is, and how deeply the team should be involved. It also entails discussions with stakeholders to make decisions on what to approve and what to postpone from a transformation backlog.
4. After finalizing the backlog, the consultants create an action plan. They agree on milestones, necessary steps, and the time required from the product team for the implementation. The backlog is then implemented iteratively according to the Agile process, using typical routines, demonstrations, and flexible adjustment mechanisms.

As every backlog has its DoDs and agile principles are in place, the transformation project is unlikely to turn into a never-ending story. But we always recommend completing one transformation phase and securing its benefits first. Additional iterations can be planned as the next step to ensure the process remains smart and manageable.

Key Takeaways

Every business and project team is unique, so there’s no one-size-fits-all strategy. That’s why we focus on understanding our clients’ pains and needs to offer approaches that fit best. Whether it be Quality Assurance or Quality Transformation, our team pays attention to improving quality engineering practices in a smart, sustainable, and educative way.

Quality infusion at different stages of your product evolution might seem like a lot of hard work, but the good news – we are here to take it over. The only things needed from your side are to set clear business goals, share your expectations of changes in the development process, and stay engaged as we work together to bring those goals to life.

If you feel that quality improvements are necessary but aren’t sure where to start, don’t hesitate to contact our team for assistance.

• #Establishing Quality Process
• #Software Product Development
• #Software Testing
• #Turnkey Project Outsourcing