A short while ago I did a mini talk called “Quality is Pointless!” - This is the blog post related to that mini talk.

I will be covering three topics today:

  1. What is Quality?
  2. When does quality Matter?
  3. When is quality Pointless?

Point 1 - What is Quality?

Quality is:

  • Value to some person - It improves somebody’s life, somehow
  • Usefulness - It serves a purpose and helps somebody
  • Correctness - It does what we expect it to do
  • Goodness - It’s enjoyable, or pleasant for the user

Point 2 - When does Quality matter?

This is an easy one - Pretty. Much. Always!

Of course there are also contexts where quality is less of a concern, and even times when Quality is Pointless*

Let me explain by using an imaginary story about a real product…

Disclaimer: The names and story are fabricated!

A man leaning back in a chair, throwing money into the air.

Steve

Let’s imagine an entrepreneur named Steve

Steve has an amazing idea

He’s sure it will make millions

Like all good entrepreneurs, he thrashes-out lots of questions to understand the viability of his product

  • Do we have the right people and skills to deliver this?
  • Who are our competitors?
  • What are the Risks?
  • What does ‘good’ look like?
  • How can we do this with a backbone of Quality?
  • What is our timescale?
  • What budget do we have?
  • How will we measure success?
  • etc

He evaluates his market competition to understand how he might compete and satisfied with the plan, the project is ready to go!

Like all good projects he collaborates and gets his team together

  • Sponsor
  • Product
  • Design
  • Engineering
  • Quality

They set about discussing the project:

  • The plan
  • The risks
  • The work items
  • How they might be developed
  • How they might be tested
  • How they might be delivered

A few months later and v1.0 the product is ready.

From ideation to creation of the product to the delivery of it, Everyone is thrilled with what they’ve produced. Bravo, team, bravo!

They ship the product to stores, but there’s hardly any interest from customers.

So they build more features into a v2

And even more features into a v3

They ship v3 to stores but there’s still no interest!

They re-evaluate the competition and are happy to be leading the way

They build yet MORE features into v4

And MOORRREE features into v5

They ship v5 to stores and nothing! Barely interest!

But the Quality is AMAZING!

They decide they want direct customer feedback on the product, but as there haven’t been enough purchases to get decent feedback, they give the product away for free and gather the feedback:

  • This smart salt shaker has voice controls, but can’t grind salt…
  • Oh no, they made a salt shaker that connects to music. Yes, it plays music while you shake salt…
  • This salt shaker is more ridiculous than Juicero…
  • What did salt do to deserve a bluetooth-connected shaker?

High quality is pointless in products with no value.

Oh dear!

All that time

All that effort

All that money spent on developing the product

And Such. Good. Quality.

THIS is when Quality is Pointless!

Let’s rewind right the way back…

Steve thrashed-out lots of questions initially to understand the viability of his product

  • Do we have the right people and skills?
  • Who are our competitors?
  • What are the Risks?
  • What does ‘good’ look like?
  • How can we do this with a backbone of Quality?
  • What is our timescale?
  • What budget do we have?
  • How will we measure success?
  • etc

What’s missing?

He didn’t try to get to the bottom of the Value of the product!

He didn’t ask Why they were doing this?

Or What problem are they solving?

Or What metrics and data is driving this initiative?

These types of question help us to decide whether there’s Value in the work to be done BEFORE we do it!

High Quality is Pointless in products with no Value

It’s a waste of time, effort, AND money

Try to understand you product’s potential value

The Smalt bluetooth salt shaker.

If you can’t, ask around and learn about the context of the work

When you understand the value, THEN Fit your quality strategy to it:

  • If it’s a gut feel or hunch or has no metrics, try to drive the focus on GETTING metrics ASAP
  • If there’s a wealth of metrics driving the decision to build it, THEN focus on quality.

It is 100% within a Quality professional’s remit to help the business and teams think about the work, the value and how we create it with high quality, when high quality makes sense.

Oh, and yes, the bluetooth-connected musical salt shaker that doesn’t grind salt is a real product… 🤦🏼‍♂️