Adam White

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   Read the rest…