The Quality Secret
I’m about to let the cat out of the bag. Some of you know it already – some of you don’t.
If you really care about quality work on improving people’s relationship to your software. Don’t stop there – take it to the next level. Work on improving how the people who work on your software interact with each other.
Get support and test working together – really working together. Have people switch roles for a couple of days – walk a mile in the other guys shoes. Have them shadow each other. Get your testers and developers together (if they aren’t already). And GAASSP.
Get your developers and your support reps working together.
Don’t just get them exchanging emails. That’s not going to help. Sitting in on meetings together doesn’t do much either. Have developers start taking support calls. Writing KB articles, reviewing calls with support, dealing with irate customers.
I bet you might have a team of services guys out “in the real world”, flying around to customers, helping them out, fixing issues, working with support. Why not hook them up with the testers and developers too? Don’t tell me they don’t have time to help improve Quality.
Like magic better people interactions make quality problems disappear
If these teams really work together I can promise you something magical will start to happen. Your quality problems will start to disappear. Magically. Poof!! Gone.
Why? Because you have increased the value you provide to your customers. Quality is NOT an attribute of software. You can’t touch it, you can’ count it. Quality is a relationship between the user and the software. So keep working on it.
Here’s the thing. If your customers find a bug and you deal with it in a timely and appropriately manner – your customers will more than likely not be upset. If you have a skilled support person they will take ownership and let the customer know their issue is being looked into. They can follow up with the customer – even if you don’t have a fix yet. That’s crazy talk man!! Make the customer feel like their issue is important and follow up even if we don’t have fix!! Pffft.
Does this mean that customers won’t get mad? No.
Does this mean your support guys won’t want to hang up on rude customers? No.
But it does mean your customers might be happier when it comes to renew their support and services contract because they got value out of it. They aren’t just a number anymore – the are a real, living human being that someone at your company cares about.
The metrics game
Once you start you are going to run into a problem - stakeholders and bosses want metrics. They like to count stuff. They have 15, 20, 100, 1000 projects on the go. They don’t have time to listen to you blab on about how people are working together to improve Quality. All they know (and hear) is that THERE IS A QUALITY PROBLEM!!!
So give them metrics. Here are some suggestions.
- # developers who sat with the support for the whole day last week.
- # of developers planned to sit with support for the whole day next week
- # of support people who sat with testing for the whole 8 hour work day
- # of testers and developers who sat together for a whole 8 hour work day
- # of customers that developers spoke to directly on the phone
- # of customers testers spoke to directly on the phone
- # of SLA violations avoided by having these interactions.
(Rob Sab mentioned this last one was done at a company and apparently it worked wonders in getting the message across.)
Keep track of the names of the people who work together. When you find someone on the development team that hasn’t had a direct interaction with a customer in the last 14 days – ask them why not. Hell – why not set your self a stretch goal and make it 7 days. Find ways to reward the team for working with customers.
If you track these metrics for 30 days and your numbers are consistently less than 10 on average – you are not meeting industry standards for quality. Sure you can game these metrics – a child can do that. But you want to really improve Quality don’t you? You really care about improving Quality don’t you? Don’t be an idiot – don’t game these stats. Take this as a sign that you have some serious work to do to improve Quality
Here is one last metric
# of layers your customers go through before they can talk to a developer.
If > than 2 work on reducing it. Create a burn down chart – track your progress. This is guaranteed to get the attention of the executives as they walk by (and probably a few Agile people). Tell them what you are tracking and why. Everyone will love you!
