Following the logic in the article: it's not actually a good outcome for the business when "Your QA people are the only ones charged with being an organizational conscience on the behalf of your users." To your earlier point, quality is something the entire team has to commit to.
salawat|3 years ago
Everyone says they hold Quality in high regard, but then when it comes time to do the work, everyone takes every escalation path to escape the QA group's mandate.
Everywhere I've been save a military shop, the political lip service is paid, but everyone by default works on getting an exec waiver on QA pushback rather than actually addressing fundamental Quality issues.
So while the advertisement in question is technically true, the way it shakes out in reality is you either have Quality valued as a political factor by those at the top, or your entire org is built like the Titanic with watertight compartments (effective Quality Controls) only up to C deck.
At that point it just takes one good iceberg of a client/feature/bad product (iceberg)... And we all know how that goes.
eternalban|3 years ago
That was not an article. It was an advertisement. Logic of advertising is distinct from normal everyday logic.
GP is making a point based on experience that maps well to my experience. Your entire team is committed to quality, and this includes stakeholders which express their commitment by treating Q/A as a first-class element of a product development process. Ideal setup imho requires a somewhat adversarial -- think Red Queen in genetic algos -- relationship between devs and q/a; and that the Q/A team and product team do -not- have the same manager.
Treat Q/A as 'internal affairs' in a police department. A fundamental necessity as developers also have a 'code of silence' regarding software misdeeds.
tldr;/ remember: even a lousy underwear gets to be inspected by Q/A.
salawat|3 years ago
And remember, if your QA group are dropping like flies because they can't in good conscience condone signing off on the output of a lousy underwear assembly line, that too is strong signal.