What is “Quality”?

The famous book, “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”, is always the first thing that comes to mind when I hear the question “What is Quality?”. In the semi-autobiographical novel, the late Robert M. Pirsig describes a decent into madness in the quest to understand the ever elusive metaphysics of quality. Thankfully, quality in product development won’t send us into a philosophical rabbit hole, especially since we will the learn Agile Development Process

Quality in Product Development

In his excellent blog post, “Agile and the Definition of Quality”, Gerald M. Weinberg explained that “quality is value to some person”. However, he follows that immediately by explaining that, in application, desired quality boils down to the question “what are people willing to pay (do) to have their requirements met”. These two sides of quality can cause emotional and political tension in between the customer and developer sides of product development teams.

Quality Assurance: a Cultural Value

This afternoon in his engaging Bootcamp presentation, our speaker Allen Moore encouraged us to take away the following extended definition of quality: “quality is the result of the skills and processes you employ that allow you to consistently and sustainably deliver value to all your stakeholders with the most invested stakeholders deriving the most value and benefit”. The Agile Development process strives to achieve a balance between the forces that determine the end quality of a product and improve understanding between all stakeholders by increased communication and collaboration.

I look forward to learning more about Agile later this fall, and can already imagine ways it’s philosophy improves product development.

posted by Rachel Turek Sullivan