1 00:00:00,040 --> 00:00:04,400 So in our book, we talk about 10 different aspects of quality. 2 00:00:04,800 --> 00:00:07,160 Culture is one, and it's one of the top ones. 3 00:00:07,160 --> 00:00:11,840 It's a social aspect, but testing is really such a small 4 00:00:12,000 --> 00:00:15,480 part of the overall thinking about a quality culture. 5 00:00:15,960 --> 00:00:19,480 You have to have the testing practice, but it's just a really 6 00:00:19,520 --> 00:00:22,120 tiny part of it. I often see that the feedback 7 00:00:22,120 --> 00:00:25,360 loops is the first one to get cut when they're feeling 8 00:00:25,360 --> 00:00:30,000 pressure for time where they're too busy, so trying to focus on 9 00:00:30,000 --> 00:00:32,759 getting that in healthy shape. I don't think that's a 10 00:00:32,759 --> 00:00:36,240 compromise that's worth making. If you don't have a quality 11 00:00:36,240 --> 00:00:39,640 culture, if you don't have good feedback loops, if you don't 12 00:00:39,640 --> 00:00:44,280 have a good way to learn and improve without those three 13 00:00:44,280 --> 00:00:47,560 social aspects, it doesn't matter who you aren't, your 14 00:00:47,560 --> 00:00:51,720 technical aspects, your quality is going to suffer. 15 00:00:51,960 --> 00:00:55,600 This is a question I get really often is we put defect 16 00:00:55,600 --> 00:00:58,640 management at the very bottom right. 17 00:00:58,960 --> 00:01:01,680 It really is the lowest priority because if you get all the other 18 00:01:01,680 --> 00:01:04,319 things right, all of a sudden you don't have to worry about 19 00:01:04,319 --> 00:01:06,680 defect management. It becomes a non issue. 20 00:01:07,000 --> 00:01:08,960 We debated about putting it in at all. 21 00:01:09,320 --> 00:01:13,440 At one point I was able to track in the organization I was in of 22 00:01:13,800 --> 00:01:17,960 several thousand people. 40 to 50% of people's time was spent 23 00:01:17,960 --> 00:01:20,720 on these activities, right? Just focusing on the defects and 24 00:01:20,720 --> 00:01:24,080 managing them and tracking them isn't going to save you the time 25 00:01:24,080 --> 00:01:25,480 and the money that you want to save. 26 00:01:25,800 --> 00:01:30,560 If you measure the defects well, it tells you how bad the quality 27 00:01:30,560 --> 00:01:32,920 is. It does not tell you how good it 28 00:01:32,920 --> 00:01:48,280 is. Hello everyone, welcome back to 29 00:01:48,280 --> 00:01:50,520 another new episode of the Technicianal Podcast. 30 00:01:50,520 --> 00:01:54,680 Today I have one repeat guest and one new guest, Janet Gregory 31 00:01:54,680 --> 00:01:57,320 and Selena Delici. So they just recently published 32 00:01:57,320 --> 00:02:00,560 a book which I find it very interesting for us to discuss 33 00:02:00,760 --> 00:02:03,200 and hopefully we can share some of the learnings from the new 34 00:02:03,200 --> 00:02:05,680 books so that you can improve your quality practices. 35 00:02:05,960 --> 00:02:08,120 So, Janet, Selena, welcome to the show. 36 00:02:08,639 --> 00:02:10,120 Thank you very. Much. 37 00:02:10,639 --> 00:02:14,200 All right, so since Janet has appeared in the episode before, 38 00:02:14,200 --> 00:02:17,800 so maybe this time I would like to ask Selena to share any kind 39 00:02:17,800 --> 00:02:20,320 of highlights or turning points from your courage and he so that 40 00:02:20,320 --> 00:02:23,800 we can learn from you. Well, I started my career as a 41 00:02:23,800 --> 00:02:27,000 software tester. Interestingly, back in the day 42 00:02:27,000 --> 00:02:29,800 when I started, I did not know that was a real job, despite 43 00:02:29,800 --> 00:02:31,760 going to school for computer programming. 44 00:02:32,240 --> 00:02:35,120 Yeah. So I quickly moved into managing 45 00:02:35,120 --> 00:02:37,960 and leading projects and teams. And one of the things that I 46 00:02:37,960 --> 00:02:43,040 enjoyed most was kind of bucking the trends of testers sat in 47 00:02:43,040 --> 00:02:47,200 their corner and developers sat in their corner and nearly did 48 00:02:47,200 --> 00:02:49,960 we ever cross. And I was at least in the 49 00:02:49,960 --> 00:02:53,840 company I was in, I was one of the early folks to try to bridge 50 00:02:53,840 --> 00:02:57,800 that chasm and bring the programmers and testers together 51 00:02:57,800 --> 00:03:00,880 to work towards finding solutions together. 52 00:03:01,360 --> 00:03:02,640 And that worked really, really well. 53 00:03:02,640 --> 00:03:06,240 And for the projects that I worked on with the testers and 54 00:03:06,240 --> 00:03:10,040 the programmers, we were doing Agile Wiser, working without any 55 00:03:10,120 --> 00:03:13,600 formal agile awareness, like we didn't know it was the thing at 56 00:03:13,600 --> 00:03:15,440 the time 'cause this was in the early knots. 57 00:03:15,920 --> 00:03:18,680 And then into the next organization I worked in, I 58 00:03:18,680 --> 00:03:21,760 helped to bring Agile informally into the organization and said, 59 00:03:21,760 --> 00:03:25,360 Oh my gosh, this was a lot of what we were doing, focusing on 60 00:03:25,360 --> 00:03:29,120 collaboration and communication and testing ideas before I wrote 61 00:03:29,120 --> 00:03:31,120 the code. And just found that it was 62 00:03:31,120 --> 00:03:34,280 really great for everyone who was involved in the project. 63 00:03:34,320 --> 00:03:37,360 And we were more successful with the projects that we were 64 00:03:37,360 --> 00:03:41,760 working on as well that we from there, I shifted into doing 65 00:03:42,000 --> 00:03:45,560 coaching and consulting around quality practices as well as 66 00:03:45,560 --> 00:03:48,120 Agile. And I've shifted into doing also 67 00:03:48,120 --> 00:03:51,120 executive coaching. So there's a myriad of things, 68 00:03:51,120 --> 00:03:53,720 but the premise of all of the work that I do is really about 69 00:03:53,720 --> 00:03:56,880 focusing on the quality of the environment and the quality of 70 00:03:56,880 --> 00:03:59,600 the people. I do have the technical 71 00:03:59,600 --> 00:04:02,920 background to back up what I'm talking about and be able to 72 00:04:03,240 --> 00:04:06,720 speak with the technical people I work with, even though I don't 73 00:04:06,720 --> 00:04:08,600 focus on that exclusively anymore. 74 00:04:09,040 --> 00:04:13,280 But I found that when we focus on creating environments that 75 00:04:13,280 --> 00:04:16,839 are sustainable and healthy for people, they're able to do 76 00:04:16,839 --> 00:04:20,600 amazing work and all of the other benefits and gains that 77 00:04:20,600 --> 00:04:23,160 the organization is looking for. Just follow suit. 78 00:04:23,600 --> 00:04:27,880 And that said, having some of the technical experience allows 79 00:04:27,880 --> 00:04:31,280 me to speak with really technical people who think maybe 80 00:04:31,280 --> 00:04:34,720 I'm too fluffy for them. So, you know, there's a bridge 81 00:04:34,720 --> 00:04:39,000 of being able to have all of the social, cultural as well as the 82 00:04:39,000 --> 00:04:42,240 technical, you know, experience to kind of bring it into a 83 00:04:42,240 --> 00:04:43,840 package. It really goes a long way for 84 00:04:43,840 --> 00:04:46,400 everybody. Thanks for sharing your story. 85 00:04:46,400 --> 00:04:49,920 I think hearing just what you said, it seems like quite 86 00:04:49,920 --> 00:04:52,840 reflected in the book, right? The gist of the book, so talking 87 00:04:52,840 --> 00:04:56,240 about quality practices and how the social part and also the 88 00:04:56,240 --> 00:04:58,640 technical part coming in together into the team. 89 00:04:58,960 --> 00:05:01,320 So maybe let's move to the book itself, right? 90 00:05:01,320 --> 00:05:04,920 The book is titled Assessing Quality assessments using QPAM. 91 00:05:05,320 --> 00:05:07,520 But the first thing that I want to talk about is about the 92 00:05:07,520 --> 00:05:10,480 quality culture. So in your book, you basically 93 00:05:10,480 --> 00:05:14,040 mentioned all these assessments is basically to assess our 94 00:05:14,040 --> 00:05:17,520 team's quality culture. But in the 1st place, what is 95 00:05:17,520 --> 00:05:21,160 actually quality culture like? How can we define it? 96 00:05:21,320 --> 00:05:22,880 That's probably the first question. 97 00:05:23,600 --> 00:05:27,720 It's funny because I've done a presentation on culture and 98 00:05:27,920 --> 00:05:30,800 keeping an agile culture as such, but when you start to 99 00:05:30,800 --> 00:05:33,680 think about what it means, it means the norms. 100 00:05:33,720 --> 00:05:37,360 A lot of people act, do they do what they say, you know, walk 101 00:05:37,360 --> 00:05:41,160 the talk kind of thing. So culture is about how an 102 00:05:41,160 --> 00:05:45,280 organization works, but it's their ecosystem. 103 00:05:45,320 --> 00:05:49,920 As such, when you're assessing A-Team, does that team fit into 104 00:05:49,920 --> 00:05:53,720 that organization, or does it have its own norms? 105 00:05:53,960 --> 00:05:58,200 Does it have its own rituals? Selena, I'm sure you can add to 106 00:05:58,200 --> 00:05:59,600 that. Yeah. 107 00:05:59,600 --> 00:06:03,880 I think just in terms of that quality aspect of culture to 108 00:06:03,880 --> 00:06:07,120 enhance what you know was saying, it's how do we bring 109 00:06:07,360 --> 00:06:11,800 mindfulness and insight and reflection into the work that 110 00:06:11,800 --> 00:06:15,480 we're doing, whether it's writing code or writing a test 111 00:06:15,480 --> 00:06:18,520 or understanding our requirements or just in how 112 00:06:18,520 --> 00:06:20,920 we're communicating with the people around us, right? 113 00:06:20,920 --> 00:06:25,520 And having that idea of I want this to be a quality interaction 114 00:06:25,520 --> 00:06:29,120 or I want this to be a quality test and being thoughtful about 115 00:06:29,120 --> 00:06:30,680 that really makes a big difference. 116 00:06:30,680 --> 00:06:35,200 It seems the organization, the teams, the customers, a lot of 117 00:06:35,200 --> 00:06:39,200 problems down the road, right? We're building in a quality 118 00:06:39,200 --> 00:06:41,680 product because we have a quality culture. 119 00:06:42,360 --> 00:06:45,320 I like the phrase that you use, right, the mindfulness and the 120 00:06:45,320 --> 00:06:48,280 reflection of how you conduct stuff right. 121 00:06:48,560 --> 00:06:52,160 I think many people associate quality culture with testing 122 00:06:52,160 --> 00:06:54,880 culture. Is this the right thing to think 123 00:06:54,880 --> 00:06:57,800 about or do you have any different perspective here? 124 00:06:57,800 --> 00:07:02,080 The. Way I'm about it is testing is a 125 00:07:02,440 --> 00:07:06,360 subset of the activities you would do starting to build in 126 00:07:06,360 --> 00:07:08,840 that culture. I know in our book we talk about 127 00:07:09,080 --> 00:07:13,880 10 different aspects of quality. Culture is one and it's one of 128 00:07:13,880 --> 00:07:17,760 the top ones. It's a social aspect, but how an 129 00:07:17,760 --> 00:07:21,120 organization, say, communicates, that's part of the culture as 130 00:07:21,120 --> 00:07:23,920 well. Is it top down or bottom up? 131 00:07:23,920 --> 00:07:26,680 Does it do some of both? How does it communicate? 132 00:07:27,040 --> 00:07:31,640 So testing is really such a small part of the overall 133 00:07:31,680 --> 00:07:35,520 culture or the overall thinking about a quality culture. 134 00:07:35,960 --> 00:07:39,480 You have to have the testing practice, but it's just a really 135 00:07:39,600 --> 00:07:41,760 tiny part of it. Well, maybe not tiny. 136 00:07:41,840 --> 00:07:45,240 Yeah, yeah. And with testing, it's not just 137 00:07:45,240 --> 00:07:48,200 like you're actually testing the software, testing the code, 138 00:07:48,200 --> 00:07:49,960 right? It's we're testing ideas. 139 00:07:49,960 --> 00:07:52,120 That's basically what it comes down to all the way through, 140 00:07:52,120 --> 00:07:54,320 right. And when we can bring those 141 00:07:54,560 --> 00:07:57,960 questions early on, we're helping to build that quality. 142 00:07:57,960 --> 00:08:01,360 And as well, there's so much more that goes into that. 143 00:08:01,360 --> 00:08:05,240 And you kind of touched on the the mindfulness phrase that I 144 00:08:05,240 --> 00:08:07,080 use. I don't believe that a lot of 145 00:08:07,080 --> 00:08:08,640 people would look at it that way. 146 00:08:09,120 --> 00:08:12,480 Probably not. But I mean that is kind of like 147 00:08:12,480 --> 00:08:14,920 the underlying thing that I'm watching for. 148 00:08:14,920 --> 00:08:17,320 If there's thoughtfulness, that's going into the work that 149 00:08:17,320 --> 00:08:20,520 people are doing, regardless of the particular task that they're 150 00:08:20,520 --> 00:08:22,800 doing. Yeah, probably it's the 151 00:08:22,800 --> 00:08:25,960 unconsciousness, right? Like people don't have this 152 00:08:25,960 --> 00:08:29,080 mindfulness thinking about the quality practices that they have 153 00:08:29,080 --> 00:08:32,440 and they always associate like with testing, testing, automated 154 00:08:32,440 --> 00:08:34,520 testing, right? How much coverage do we have? 155 00:08:34,520 --> 00:08:36,840 How many testers do we have? How many test cases? 156 00:08:37,080 --> 00:08:39,640 So I think the point in your book that you try to bring is 157 00:08:39,640 --> 00:08:42,440 actually testing is just one part of the quality thing, 158 00:08:42,440 --> 00:08:43,520 right? And there are many other 159 00:08:43,520 --> 00:08:45,840 aspects. And I think maybe in the 1st 160 00:08:45,840 --> 00:08:48,800 place, what made you wanted to write this book? 161 00:08:48,920 --> 00:08:52,200 So like, do you find it difficult to actually assess 162 00:08:52,400 --> 00:08:55,680 people's quality practices? Like maybe what made you write 163 00:08:55,680 --> 00:08:58,280 this book? We've both been asked to do with 164 00:08:58,320 --> 00:09:03,200 husbands for organizations in our past and Janet was asked by 165 00:09:03,200 --> 00:09:06,160 a particular client. So I think just better formalize 166 00:09:06,160 --> 00:09:09,880 what that might look like. We came across a couple of other 167 00:09:09,880 --> 00:09:13,280 models and Janet said, hey, would you want to help me build 168 00:09:13,280 --> 00:09:15,720 something out? And then we suddenly had our 169 00:09:15,720 --> 00:09:18,960 quality practices assessment model and said well, now what? 170 00:09:18,960 --> 00:09:21,200 We think we have something of value to share with the 171 00:09:21,200 --> 00:09:23,800 industry. So be hummed and hot and try 172 00:09:23,800 --> 00:09:26,240 down some ideas and land it on. You know, the easiest thing to 173 00:09:26,240 --> 00:09:29,520 do, which actually turned out to be more work than we thought, 174 00:09:30,000 --> 00:09:33,040 was to write a book about it so that we can get it out in and 175 00:09:33,040 --> 00:09:35,240 share it with, you know, the industry with our colleagues. 176 00:09:35,240 --> 00:09:37,920 So that we weren't to bottleneck if people could just pick it up 177 00:09:37,920 --> 00:09:39,560 and run with it as they wanted to. 178 00:09:40,360 --> 00:09:44,600 But but is it common that many people poorly conducting their 179 00:09:44,600 --> 00:09:47,880 culture or, you know, like withholding their quality? 180 00:09:48,280 --> 00:09:52,080 And hence I think, should every team try to think about doing 181 00:09:52,080 --> 00:09:55,200 this kind of assessment to actually know where they're at 182 00:09:55,520 --> 00:09:59,680 and actually how to improve? I would like to see a really 183 00:09:59,680 --> 00:10:03,320 team do an assessment like this. There's lots of them out there, 184 00:10:03,320 --> 00:10:07,680 but if they know where they're at, then they can start moving 185 00:10:07,680 --> 00:10:12,160 forward, right? If you never stop and assess 186 00:10:12,160 --> 00:10:16,920 whatever level you want to be at or whatever, you can assess 187 00:10:17,120 --> 00:10:20,520 small portion of what you're doing, for example, and say 188 00:10:20,840 --> 00:10:24,360 where are we? And if you never stop and look 189 00:10:24,360 --> 00:10:28,440 at that, then sometimes teams just start spinning their wheels 190 00:10:28,440 --> 00:10:30,960 and get in a rut and really don't know what. 191 00:10:30,960 --> 00:10:34,640 They try fixing that and fixing that, but they don't understand 192 00:10:34,920 --> 00:10:37,280 why or where they're trying to even go. 193 00:10:38,240 --> 00:10:41,560 Yeah. So in the past I've tried my own 194 00:10:41,560 --> 00:10:43,600 assessment as well, my own version of assessment. 195 00:10:43,880 --> 00:10:47,440 And actually it's really hard first is to define the model, 196 00:10:47,440 --> 00:10:49,080 right or like the questions to ask. 197 00:10:49,520 --> 00:10:52,680 And then after that you probably have different kind of stages to 198 00:10:52,680 --> 00:10:54,440 actually represent where team at. 199 00:10:54,960 --> 00:10:56,560 I think it's really hard kind of problem. 200 00:10:56,560 --> 00:10:59,280 So I really thank you for coming up with this kind of assessment, 201 00:10:59,280 --> 00:11:02,880 which I think is quite holistic. So maybe let's move to the 202 00:11:03,080 --> 00:11:06,520 actually Q Pam itself, right, the quality practices assessment 203 00:11:06,520 --> 00:11:09,480 model. So there are 10 practices that 204 00:11:09,480 --> 00:11:12,920 you include in this model and also four kind of like stages 205 00:11:13,120 --> 00:11:14,920 for people to actually know where they're at. 206 00:11:15,240 --> 00:11:18,640 So maybe let's start with all the 10 different practices 207 00:11:18,640 --> 00:11:21,040 first, like in the high level, what are those? 208 00:11:21,320 --> 00:11:23,080 And yeah, maybe we can talk from there. 209 00:11:23,800 --> 00:11:26,880 Yeah. So we'll call the top level 210 00:11:26,880 --> 00:11:29,200 quality aspects. And then within each of the 211 00:11:29,200 --> 00:11:32,120 aspects we have a number of practices identified. 212 00:11:32,480 --> 00:11:35,680 So the quality aspects that we've identified, the tenor, 213 00:11:35,680 --> 00:11:39,080 feedback loops and culture, learning and improvement, those 214 00:11:39,080 --> 00:11:41,960 are the social ones. Development approach quality and 215 00:11:41,960 --> 00:11:46,440 test ownership are the social, technical and testing breath 216 00:11:46,520 --> 00:11:50,160 code quality and technical debts, automation and tools, 217 00:11:50,160 --> 00:11:54,920 deployment pipelines and defect managements are the non social. 218 00:11:55,120 --> 00:11:58,360 So those are the technical ones. So there's a lot in there. 219 00:11:58,360 --> 00:12:01,920 And I think a lot of people would be surprised that like we 220 00:12:01,920 --> 00:12:04,240 did a lot of work and we reached out to colleagues to kind of 221 00:12:04,240 --> 00:12:08,000 prioritize them in terms of what are the most important ones to 222 00:12:08,000 --> 00:12:12,400 focus on 1st to get your organization in better shape. 223 00:12:12,880 --> 00:12:15,160 And I think a lot of people would be surprised that we don't 224 00:12:15,160 --> 00:12:18,000 focus on the technical ones first, that we're focusing on 225 00:12:18,000 --> 00:12:20,680 the social ones first. We start to get feedback loops 226 00:12:20,680 --> 00:12:24,640 in place early on, for example, like within our tests, within 227 00:12:24,640 --> 00:12:27,560 our code or feedback loops within our team, feedback loops 228 00:12:27,560 --> 00:12:30,040 with our stakeholders, feedback loops for their customers. 229 00:12:30,440 --> 00:12:34,480 That really just helps to smooth everything else out for the 230 00:12:34,480 --> 00:12:37,600 other aspects down the road. What would you ask them to? 231 00:12:37,600 --> 00:12:39,880 Yeah. How do we communicate those 232 00:12:39,880 --> 00:12:43,560 feedback loops is really about how do we communicate with each 233 00:12:43,560 --> 00:12:45,640 other? And if you don't have those, 234 00:12:45,960 --> 00:12:48,560 then you end up with throwing it over the wall and a lot of 235 00:12:48,560 --> 00:12:52,480 silos. So that was why we kind of chose 236 00:12:52,480 --> 00:12:55,760 that number one. It's interesting, I often see 237 00:12:56,160 --> 00:12:58,920 and organizing, 'cause I do consulting and coaching working 238 00:12:58,920 --> 00:13:02,640 companies, I often see that the feedback loops is the first one 239 00:13:02,640 --> 00:13:05,680 to get cut when they're feeling pressure for time where they're 240 00:13:05,680 --> 00:13:08,960 too busy. So trying to focus on getting 241 00:13:08,960 --> 00:13:12,240 that in healthy shape, I don't think that's a compromise that's 242 00:13:12,240 --> 00:13:16,120 worth making. And that alone, focusing on that 243 00:13:16,120 --> 00:13:20,040 and doing that really well is gonna help reduce costs, improve 244 00:13:20,040 --> 00:13:23,760 quality, increase value, all of the things that organizations 245 00:13:23,760 --> 00:13:27,840 want to have happen. At one conversation, it can take 246 00:13:27,840 --> 00:13:32,280 away so many misunderstandings. I think intuitively when people 247 00:13:32,280 --> 00:13:34,400 understand that software development is a social 248 00:13:34,400 --> 00:13:37,680 technical kind of systems involved, right, they actually 249 00:13:37,680 --> 00:13:39,960 understand that they should probably prioritize social 250 00:13:39,960 --> 00:13:41,880 aspect more. You know, all these feedback 251 00:13:41,880 --> 00:13:44,640 loops, communication, collaboration, psychological 252 00:13:44,640 --> 00:13:48,280 safety and things like that. But actually many people do not 253 00:13:48,280 --> 00:13:50,880 have this same understanding about social technical. 254 00:13:50,880 --> 00:13:53,560 And that's why probably intuitively for them is actually 255 00:13:53,560 --> 00:13:55,520 focus more on the technical practices first. 256 00:13:55,800 --> 00:13:59,480 So things like, you know, CICD or automatic testing and things 257 00:13:59,480 --> 00:14:01,760 like that. So I think I like in the book 258 00:14:01,760 --> 00:14:05,000 that you actually sequence these technical practices in the order 259 00:14:05,000 --> 00:14:07,280 of importance, right? And actually just Selena 260 00:14:07,280 --> 00:14:10,440 mentioned you start with social and then some technical aspects 261 00:14:10,440 --> 00:14:12,920 at the end. So maybe a little bit here, like 262 00:14:12,960 --> 00:14:16,120 explain why do you think this order of importance is actually 263 00:14:16,120 --> 00:14:19,760 very important? Well, so one of the things that 264 00:14:20,280 --> 00:14:23,120 I'll be just say right off the bat, because this is a question 265 00:14:23,120 --> 00:14:27,720 I get really often is we put defect management at the very 266 00:14:27,720 --> 00:14:30,760 bottom, right, because it's really the lowest. 267 00:14:31,120 --> 00:14:33,840 It really is the lowest priority because if you get all the other 268 00:14:33,840 --> 00:14:36,520 things right, all of a sudden you don't have to worry about 269 00:14:36,520 --> 00:14:38,840 defect management. It becomes a non issue. 270 00:14:39,200 --> 00:14:43,720 We debated about putting it in at all, but we did in priority 271 00:14:43,720 --> 00:14:48,720 as if you have, this makes the next thing easier, right? 272 00:14:49,040 --> 00:14:51,720 Because if you don't have those social aspects, if you don't 273 00:14:51,720 --> 00:14:55,320 have a quality culture, if you don't have good feedback loops, 274 00:14:55,320 --> 00:15:00,280 if you don't have a good way to learn and improve without those 275 00:15:00,280 --> 00:15:03,880 three social specs, it doesn't matter how good you aren't your 276 00:15:03,880 --> 00:15:08,080 technical aspects, your quality is going to suffer. 277 00:15:08,400 --> 00:15:10,800 The quality of the product, the quality of the process. 278 00:15:11,240 --> 00:15:13,840 So that's kind of why we put those ones first for sure. 279 00:15:13,840 --> 00:15:15,960 Do you want to take the other one Selena? 280 00:15:16,640 --> 00:15:20,560 I think you kind of hit it on the hence on it like to your 281 00:15:20,560 --> 00:15:23,360 point, you know, once you get the next things in place, the 282 00:15:23,360 --> 00:15:25,240 next things go. Like if your development 283 00:15:25,240 --> 00:15:28,880 approach is in good shape, then quality and test ownership can 284 00:15:29,120 --> 00:15:31,960 more easily follow, right? And everything just kind of 285 00:15:31,960 --> 00:15:35,840 follows through one after another with more ease if we're 286 00:15:35,840 --> 00:15:38,000 getting them in order one at a time. 287 00:15:38,200 --> 00:15:42,520 That said, there's no requirements for any team to 288 00:15:42,680 --> 00:15:46,320 work through improvements in their team in that order. 289 00:15:46,320 --> 00:15:48,920 They might want to focus on the areas that they're struggling 290 00:15:48,920 --> 00:15:52,080 the most in also, right. But if you're really starting 291 00:15:52,080 --> 00:15:55,600 fresh and you want to do a complete overhaul, like by all 292 00:15:55,600 --> 00:16:00,000 means work through the priority that, you know, we felt was more 293 00:16:00,000 --> 00:16:01,640 more relevance and importance, yeah. 294 00:16:02,120 --> 00:16:05,400 And so we're just going to say that a team may take, for 295 00:16:05,400 --> 00:16:08,840 example, development approach and just do an assessment on 296 00:16:08,840 --> 00:16:11,960 that to start with. Yeah, I like the way that you 297 00:16:11,960 --> 00:16:15,840 explain like if you focus on the first few practices first, 298 00:16:15,840 --> 00:16:18,760 right, the remaining practices will become easier to implement. 299 00:16:19,000 --> 00:16:22,160 I think this again, intuitively makes sense if you understand 300 00:16:22,240 --> 00:16:25,360 this social technical aspect. But for people that also 301 00:16:25,360 --> 00:16:28,440 struggle to actually thinking about how to improve this 302 00:16:28,440 --> 00:16:31,000 quality assessment, I think this model is kind of like good, 303 00:16:31,000 --> 00:16:33,280 right? But I have one question because 304 00:16:33,280 --> 00:16:37,080 because typically if we find this kind of model somewhere and 305 00:16:37,080 --> 00:16:40,000 you have different stages, they will call this maturity model. 306 00:16:40,360 --> 00:16:42,720 Why in your book you specifically mentioned this is 307 00:16:42,720 --> 00:16:46,480 not actually a maturity model. So maybe explain a little bit on 308 00:16:46,480 --> 00:16:49,400 this. Neither of us are a big fan of 309 00:16:49,400 --> 00:16:51,760 maturity models. That's probably the starting 310 00:16:51,760 --> 00:16:56,000 point because it indicates that if you're doing things right, 311 00:16:56,000 --> 00:16:57,960 you have to be at a certain state. 312 00:16:57,960 --> 00:17:00,640 Like you have to go to the highest level, like you're not 313 00:17:00,640 --> 00:17:03,640 doing a good job otherwise. And we don't think that's true. 314 00:17:03,640 --> 00:17:08,440 We think that each organization and you know, and team is unique 315 00:17:08,520 --> 00:17:12,200 and the environment that they're in and the desires that they 316 00:17:12,200 --> 00:17:15,280 want for themselves, it should be respected, right? 317 00:17:15,280 --> 00:17:18,880 So for one team like hitting, moving from beginning to 318 00:17:18,880 --> 00:17:22,200 unifying to practicing might be enough in terms of their testing 319 00:17:22,200 --> 00:17:24,319 breadth and development approach, for example. 320 00:17:24,319 --> 00:17:27,520 And they say, know what, we're really happy here and we don't 321 00:17:27,520 --> 00:17:29,440 need to go into the innovation stage. 322 00:17:29,440 --> 00:17:30,720 It doesn't make sense for our product. 323 00:17:30,720 --> 00:17:33,400 It doesn't make sense for our people and our customers don't 324 00:17:33,400 --> 00:17:35,960 care enough. You know, like, it could be 325 00:17:35,960 --> 00:17:39,200 something like that, right? So really it's about respecting 326 00:17:39,360 --> 00:17:42,840 the uniqueness of each environment and the people and 327 00:17:42,840 --> 00:17:45,360 the product and that they're able to make those decisions for 328 00:17:45,360 --> 00:17:48,600 themselves. The key is being aware of what 329 00:17:48,600 --> 00:17:52,440 possibilities might be there for them and really making a 330 00:17:52,440 --> 00:17:56,120 conscious choice rather than just blindly landing somewhere 331 00:17:56,120 --> 00:17:59,400 and saying we're the best because we're here, but we don't 332 00:17:59,400 --> 00:18:02,360 know where here is and we don't know you know, what the other 333 00:18:02,360 --> 00:18:05,800 options are, right? So we want teams to 334 00:18:06,160 --> 00:18:09,640 organizations, ideally to make conscious decisions about what's 335 00:18:09,640 --> 00:18:12,480 best for them rather than blindly landing somewhere. 336 00:18:13,240 --> 00:18:14,520 Yeah, thanks for explaining that. 337 00:18:14,520 --> 00:18:17,760 I, I like the way that you phrase their options that you 338 00:18:17,760 --> 00:18:21,000 can aspire to become, right? And then you consciously make 339 00:18:21,000 --> 00:18:24,000 decision rather than maturity model typically is and like 340 00:18:24,000 --> 00:18:27,280 released by, I don't know, like consulting or some industry best 341 00:18:27,280 --> 00:18:30,280 practices and management. Once they see it, they just say, 342 00:18:30,280 --> 00:18:34,440 OK, we want to be the most mature organization ever, right 343 00:18:34,440 --> 00:18:35,960 by following this maturity model. 344 00:18:36,520 --> 00:18:39,720 Sorry, can I just add to that? Yeah, like you're you're hitting 345 00:18:39,720 --> 00:18:42,600 on a hand like it's not a best practices, right. 346 00:18:42,600 --> 00:18:47,160 It's options available and when people are striving to maturity 347 00:18:47,160 --> 00:18:50,560 model, people will start to gain the system so that they believe 348 00:18:50,560 --> 00:18:53,800 that they're high performing or world class when they're 349 00:18:53,800 --> 00:18:56,680 actually not because they need to work good to management, 350 00:18:56,680 --> 00:18:58,960 right? So moving against that is 351 00:18:58,960 --> 00:19:02,640 important and so that people can be honest with themselves and 352 00:19:02,640 --> 00:19:05,520 they feel safe to be honest with where they're at and where do 353 00:19:05,520 --> 00:19:07,160 they want to land. And it's OK. 354 00:19:07,200 --> 00:19:10,520 It's OK that they don't want to be at innovation, which kind of 355 00:19:10,520 --> 00:19:13,440 goes in part with the psychological safety aspect of 356 00:19:13,440 --> 00:19:16,400 culture, right? And if we can promote a model 357 00:19:16,400 --> 00:19:19,000 that espouses that, I think that's healthier for everybody, 358 00:19:19,000 --> 00:19:21,760 too. Yeah, I think the spirit is the 359 00:19:21,760 --> 00:19:24,000 most important thing, right. So I find all these kind of 360 00:19:24,000 --> 00:19:26,680 assessment typically is like what you said, right? 361 00:19:26,680 --> 00:19:30,200 People will just game it because once you make it like a KPI, 362 00:19:30,200 --> 00:19:32,480 right, you will just find the metrics, right? 363 00:19:32,480 --> 00:19:34,840 What are the metrics that are being assessed and try to game 364 00:19:34,840 --> 00:19:38,600 that and you know, and try to actually make people feel that 365 00:19:38,600 --> 00:19:41,280 they're actually improving. So I think the spirit is very 366 00:19:41,280 --> 00:19:43,640 important and we should not kind of like blame, right? 367 00:19:43,640 --> 00:19:46,040 So you mentioned about psychological safety, like not 368 00:19:46,040 --> 00:19:48,600 blame the people for the bad practices that they're doing 369 00:19:48,760 --> 00:19:51,680 simply because if it works for their context, like, why not? 370 00:19:52,040 --> 00:19:55,040 So I think you define the four different dimensions you 371 00:19:55,040 --> 00:19:57,280 mentioned, right? It's not like maturity models 372 00:19:57,280 --> 00:19:59,120 again. So there are four different 373 00:19:59,120 --> 00:20:01,920 dimensions and it's kind of like the different terms that you 374 00:20:01,920 --> 00:20:03,480 use. Maybe a little bit explaining 375 00:20:03,480 --> 00:20:04,960 here as well. What are the four different 376 00:20:04,960 --> 00:20:09,080 dimensions? So we landed on the idea of 377 00:20:09,080 --> 00:20:12,800 beginning because we tossed around a lot of terms. 378 00:20:13,000 --> 00:20:16,880 We asked them up a lot. We decided everybody knows where 379 00:20:16,880 --> 00:20:19,720 they are. So beginning, it's kind of where 380 00:20:19,720 --> 00:20:23,240 are you starting? And usually that'll happen. 381 00:20:23,240 --> 00:20:27,040 And it still amazes me how many teams are still moving to Agile 382 00:20:27,040 --> 00:20:29,880 that aren't they've come from waterfall, maybe they've come 383 00:20:29,880 --> 00:20:33,160 from some chaos or something else. 384 00:20:33,160 --> 00:20:35,880 Who knows. But the beginning, where are you 385 00:20:35,880 --> 00:20:38,840 starting? You know that you have issues, 386 00:20:38,840 --> 00:20:42,600 you want to get better. So we just said, OK, we're 387 00:20:42,600 --> 00:20:45,200 beginning. And then the unifying is the 388 00:20:45,200 --> 00:20:50,360 idea that the team is starting to adapt to agile practices. 389 00:20:50,480 --> 00:20:52,920 Whether you call it agile or not, I really don't care. 390 00:20:53,400 --> 00:20:56,440 But they're starting to think about collaboration more. 391 00:20:56,440 --> 00:20:59,360 They're trying to get those communication lines better. 392 00:20:59,680 --> 00:21:03,480 So we talked about unifying, they're doing the practices 393 00:21:03,880 --> 00:21:08,840 they're trying to understand and then practicing this thing is 394 00:21:08,880 --> 00:21:13,520 really our right. We understand we're delivering 395 00:21:13,520 --> 00:21:17,320 our products on a regular basis, whatever regular basis means 396 00:21:17,640 --> 00:21:19,800 we're not having very many defects in. 397 00:21:19,800 --> 00:21:23,760 We're got a continuous integration and delivery cycle 398 00:21:23,760 --> 00:21:26,560 going. We're practicing, we're doing 399 00:21:26,880 --> 00:21:30,640 well and then innovating is those teams that, and I've been 400 00:21:30,640 --> 00:21:34,000 on a few and they're such fun, but there's a lot of stress too, 401 00:21:34,240 --> 00:21:37,000 because you're always pushing the edge and and you're 402 00:21:37,000 --> 00:21:41,000 innovating. You work together as that really 403 00:21:41,000 --> 00:21:46,240 great team and you're just constantly looking for what a 404 00:21:46,240 --> 00:21:49,720 better yourself, right? And so that's innovating. 405 00:21:50,280 --> 00:21:53,360 Did I miss anything Selena? Oh no, you did great. 406 00:21:53,360 --> 00:21:56,720 And I would just add, you know, Janet said you could be agile or 407 00:21:56,720 --> 00:21:59,280 we don't care what you call it. I mean, we've titled the book 408 00:21:59,280 --> 00:22:02,960 Assessing Natural Quality Practices with QPAN, but it 409 00:22:02,960 --> 00:22:07,840 doesn't have to be agile. I mean, the particular practices 410 00:22:07,960 --> 00:22:11,400 embodied are just healthy practices for any software 411 00:22:11,960 --> 00:22:15,600 technical organization, right? Irregardless of agile, whatever 412 00:22:15,600 --> 00:22:17,400 comes after it, it doesn't really matter. 413 00:22:17,400 --> 00:22:19,960 Like these are just healthy practices for any software 414 00:22:19,960 --> 00:22:21,680 organization if we have them in place. 415 00:22:21,680 --> 00:22:25,160 When I started my career a long long time ago, we didn't work in 416 00:22:25,160 --> 00:22:28,160 Angel then, but boy oh boy, we would have been in better shape 417 00:22:28,160 --> 00:22:30,000 if we had been replying this stuff right? 418 00:22:30,800 --> 00:22:33,360 I think the same could be said now or 15 years from now. 419 00:22:34,160 --> 00:22:36,240 Thanks for explaining all these different dimensions. 420 00:22:36,240 --> 00:22:37,640 I think it kind of like makes sense, right? 421 00:22:37,640 --> 00:22:40,920 People always begins when they learn about new practice, right? 422 00:22:40,920 --> 00:22:45,080 So you have the beginning, you have then the unifying right? 423 00:22:45,080 --> 00:22:48,680 Trying to gather the thoughts, adapting to the practices and 424 00:22:48,680 --> 00:22:51,080 understanding actually the gist of the practices. 425 00:22:51,520 --> 00:22:53,760 And then you move into practices, maybe when those 426 00:22:53,760 --> 00:22:55,280 practices becomes a habit, right? 427 00:22:55,280 --> 00:22:58,360 You kind of like do all the time and then innovating is always 428 00:22:58,360 --> 00:23:01,120 pushing the boundary continuously improve from what 429 00:23:01,120 --> 00:23:03,280 you understand. I think this is probably the 430 00:23:03,280 --> 00:23:06,320 Suhari thing, right? So in Agile you have this also 431 00:23:06,320 --> 00:23:08,680 loop, right? So yeah, I think I like this 432 00:23:08,680 --> 00:23:11,640 dimensions. So maybe if we can, right, let's 433 00:23:11,640 --> 00:23:14,840 just touch on a little bit on few of the practices to give 434 00:23:14,840 --> 00:23:18,760 people flavor, how they actually use this quality aspects and 435 00:23:18,760 --> 00:23:20,520 dimensions. So maybe let's start with the 436 00:23:20,520 --> 00:23:22,080 most important one for sure, right? 437 00:23:22,080 --> 00:23:24,000 The feedback loops. We kind of like touch on a 438 00:23:24,000 --> 00:23:25,760 little bit here and there about it. 439 00:23:26,200 --> 00:23:29,280 So feedback loops is also one thing that kind of like brought 440 00:23:29,280 --> 00:23:32,880 up quite a lot recently about developer experience, about also 441 00:23:32,880 --> 00:23:36,040 the flow things, right? And also continuous delivery and 442 00:23:36,040 --> 00:23:38,720 all that, all gathers around feedback loops. 443 00:23:38,960 --> 00:23:40,720 What is the most important thing here? 444 00:23:40,720 --> 00:23:43,800 How can people assess their feedback loops against all these 445 00:23:43,800 --> 00:23:47,440 4 dimensions? So we've evaluated that. 446 00:23:48,000 --> 00:23:51,400 It was only tough to try to figure out practices or wrong 447 00:23:51,400 --> 00:23:53,880 feedback loops. So we talked about within the 448 00:23:53,880 --> 00:23:57,800 delivery team themselves, things like a lot of programmers and 449 00:23:57,800 --> 00:24:01,880 testers talk to each other or anybody else on the team. 450 00:24:02,160 --> 00:24:07,240 So in beginning they probably have, you know, throw it over 451 00:24:07,240 --> 00:24:09,360 the wall kind of thing. They don't talk to each other. 452 00:24:09,680 --> 00:24:12,600 They were lots of defects, things like that. 453 00:24:12,600 --> 00:24:14,960 How are they actually talking to each other? 454 00:24:15,360 --> 00:24:20,760 Then we have the idea of between customers, stakeholders and the 455 00:24:20,760 --> 00:24:24,240 delivery team. How do you interact with your 456 00:24:24,440 --> 00:24:26,680 customers? Do you even talk to them? 457 00:24:27,120 --> 00:24:29,560 Do you listen to what they have to say? 458 00:24:29,960 --> 00:24:34,600 Like if you were giving a Dunlop and I watch teams, then on teams 459 00:24:34,880 --> 00:24:39,200 where you give a demo, the stakeholders lots of good things 460 00:24:39,200 --> 00:24:41,160 and nobody writes anything wrong. 461 00:24:41,440 --> 00:24:45,040 They don't pay attention. And then the third one that we 462 00:24:45,040 --> 00:24:48,440 talked about is between leadership and the delivery 463 00:24:48,440 --> 00:24:51,680 team. So in a beginning kind of thing, 464 00:24:51,680 --> 00:24:55,120 it's probably a hierarchical 1 dimensional. 465 00:24:55,480 --> 00:25:00,520 The leadership team says, hey, thou shalt do this and everybody 466 00:25:00,520 --> 00:25:03,880 else goes running and does that changes priorities a million 467 00:25:03,880 --> 00:25:05,920 times because somebody tells them to. 468 00:25:06,240 --> 00:25:10,360 And so when you looking at those different aspects in those 469 00:25:10,400 --> 00:25:15,160 particular practices, you can kind of see that as say a 470 00:25:15,240 --> 00:25:20,560 practicing team will have multi directional kind of feedback 471 00:25:20,560 --> 00:25:21,960 loops with their leadership team. 472 00:25:22,320 --> 00:25:25,960 They are not afraid because they have psychological safety. 473 00:25:26,360 --> 00:25:29,720 They're not afraid to say, hey, you know what, that won't work. 474 00:25:30,160 --> 00:25:33,760 Can we try this and improve those kind of things for us? 475 00:25:34,240 --> 00:25:36,840 At the beginning, you're really just doing what somebody tells 476 00:25:36,840 --> 00:25:39,920 you to do, O. That's how we're assessing those 477 00:25:39,920 --> 00:25:44,360 feedback loop on those 3 dimensions, those 3 ractices. 478 00:25:45,040 --> 00:25:48,720 Yeah, I think feedback loop just like for any kind of leaders or 479 00:25:48,720 --> 00:25:51,200 management, right? Maybe again like they are not 480 00:25:51,200 --> 00:25:53,920 aware of about this concept, they've think it's fluffy, 481 00:25:53,920 --> 00:25:55,280 right? What do you mean by feedback 482 00:25:55,280 --> 00:25:57,880 loops, right? So I think it's not easily 483 00:25:58,000 --> 00:26:00,640 quantifiable. So maybe for management of 484 00:26:00,640 --> 00:26:03,360 people, when you want to explain, you should improve your 485 00:26:03,360 --> 00:26:05,280 feedback loop because like feedback loop, I think it's 486 00:26:05,280 --> 00:26:07,880 very, very evident. You know, in agile practices, 487 00:26:07,880 --> 00:26:10,480 DevOps practices, this is probably the one thing that they 488 00:26:10,480 --> 00:26:13,880 focus a lot on, right? But for management to actually 489 00:26:13,880 --> 00:26:16,320 understand the concept of feedback loops, how would you 490 00:26:16,320 --> 00:26:18,680 explain this? So think of like when you do 491 00:26:18,680 --> 00:26:21,560 this assessment and you have to explain why feedback loop is the 492 00:26:21,560 --> 00:26:25,800 most important thing. Well, it's all about checking in 493 00:26:26,160 --> 00:26:35,400 and getting feedback, right? So basically we're testing ideas 494 00:26:35,640 --> 00:26:39,600 basically as we're going, so you know, as a tester to a 495 00:26:39,600 --> 00:26:43,840 programmer, a business analyst to a tester, let's say like 496 00:26:43,880 --> 00:26:47,280 we're asking questions of each other frequently day-to-day 497 00:26:47,280 --> 00:26:50,600 about going on and what's our idea and what's our design and 498 00:26:50,600 --> 00:26:52,600 checking those assumptions as we go, right. 499 00:26:52,800 --> 00:26:56,160 And then the programmer maybe say, hey, tester, come sit over 500 00:26:56,160 --> 00:26:58,520 here. I have some questions about what 501 00:26:58,520 --> 00:27:01,280 I'm doing and writing the code. Can you pair with me on that? 502 00:27:01,520 --> 00:27:03,560 So we're constantly checking those things. 503 00:27:03,560 --> 00:27:07,160 And it's the same with as we're communicating with stakeholders 504 00:27:07,160 --> 00:27:12,360 or customers or management to the team that we are ensuring 505 00:27:12,360 --> 00:27:15,240 that we're constantly checking in to make sure that we're on 506 00:27:15,240 --> 00:27:19,080 the optimal path to shorten our cycle time and do that with high 507 00:27:19,080 --> 00:27:21,680 quality so that our customers get high value. 508 00:27:22,000 --> 00:27:26,120 So in the book, we've listed a lot of questions that could be 509 00:27:26,120 --> 00:27:30,800 asked for each of the specific areas, and some of them are a 510 00:27:30,800 --> 00:27:34,080 little qualitative, maybe a little fuzzier, Geely. 511 00:27:34,440 --> 00:27:37,720 But how does a tester team member know what is ready for 512 00:27:37,720 --> 00:27:39,800 testing? I mean, like, what is your tool? 513 00:27:39,800 --> 00:27:41,880 What is your source? Is it a communication? 514 00:27:41,880 --> 00:27:44,920 Is it a sticky note on her wall? Is it something on a task board? 515 00:27:44,920 --> 00:27:47,440 Is it something that comes through where the code is 516 00:27:47,440 --> 00:27:51,720 stored, like checking in on how do we know when something's 517 00:27:51,720 --> 00:27:54,680 ready to test? Does the team document decisions 518 00:27:54,680 --> 00:27:57,720 that they make Right. So some of them are yes or no. 519 00:27:57,720 --> 00:28:00,000 And then where do we do that? It's really like there's a 520 00:28:00,000 --> 00:28:03,240 really good comprehensive, holistic set of questions that 521 00:28:03,240 --> 00:28:05,280 we've included. So really check in on. 522 00:28:05,480 --> 00:28:09,120 And I think that the questions really get into the meat of what 523 00:28:09,120 --> 00:28:11,400 it is that you would want to be looking for, for any of the 524 00:28:11,400 --> 00:28:14,120 particular areas. But what it really comes down 525 00:28:14,120 --> 00:28:17,560 to, I think if we're talking to senior management, like what do 526 00:28:17,560 --> 00:28:21,080 they care about? Get it done faster, save us 527 00:28:21,080 --> 00:28:24,360 money, make our customers happy. Like there's other things of 528 00:28:24,360 --> 00:28:28,560 course too, but those are often the predominant forces. 529 00:28:28,560 --> 00:28:31,640 And it seems a little counterintuitive that having 530 00:28:31,640 --> 00:28:35,040 more conversations and more check ins is gonna get us the 531 00:28:35,040 --> 00:28:38,240 faster throughput with higher value and reduced for cost. 532 00:28:38,240 --> 00:28:42,760 But there's good data that you could find in your own 533 00:28:42,760 --> 00:28:45,440 organization, never mind from other ones that show that that 534 00:28:45,440 --> 00:28:48,080 is the case. Because if we go too far down a 535 00:28:48,080 --> 00:28:51,920 wrong path, then you're actually increasing time, you're 536 00:28:51,920 --> 00:28:55,600 increasing costs and, you know, and down the road maybe reducing 537 00:28:55,600 --> 00:28:57,880 the value that your customer's going to get because you didn't 538 00:28:57,880 --> 00:28:59,760 give them what they actually wanted or needed. 539 00:29:00,120 --> 00:29:02,520 So those checkpoints are really helpful. 540 00:29:02,720 --> 00:29:06,840 It's akin to like going on a road trip and you know, you have 541 00:29:06,840 --> 00:29:08,920 an idea of where you are and where you want to go, but you 542 00:29:08,920 --> 00:29:12,120 never check the map and you don't check the map anywhere 543 00:29:12,120 --> 00:29:14,600 along the route to know that maybe you're 300 miles off 544 00:29:14,600 --> 00:29:16,120 track. Like you want to check in and 545 00:29:16,120 --> 00:29:17,600 know that you're actually in the right path. 546 00:29:17,960 --> 00:29:21,600 And maybe that fits for people who drove without using AGPS 547 00:29:22,080 --> 00:29:26,320 mapping tool back in the day like I did Once Upon a time, but 548 00:29:26,320 --> 00:29:28,760 it's the same thing. Like pardon. 549 00:29:29,000 --> 00:29:32,840 One of my favorite questions to ask to help them think about 550 00:29:32,840 --> 00:29:36,600 what feedback loops is, is how does leadership get the 551 00:29:36,600 --> 00:29:39,840 information they need to make decisions? 552 00:29:40,200 --> 00:29:43,120 That tells you lots about feedback loops between 553 00:29:43,120 --> 00:29:44,640 leadership and the delivery team. 554 00:29:45,000 --> 00:29:47,400 That's what we're talking about, too. 555 00:29:48,680 --> 00:29:51,000 I love that question. So actually that make you 556 00:29:51,000 --> 00:29:54,800 reflect a lot about how do you get the current situation of the 557 00:29:54,800 --> 00:29:56,840 team, right? Where the team at what kind of 558 00:29:56,840 --> 00:29:59,480 struggle challenges that they're currently facing, right? 559 00:29:59,680 --> 00:30:01,640 And I like the way Selena mentioned, right? 560 00:30:01,640 --> 00:30:05,280 So it's not about feedback loop off delivering features fast. 561 00:30:05,280 --> 00:30:08,000 It's actually testing ideas, knowing the direction, right? 562 00:30:08,320 --> 00:30:10,680 Knowing that actually you are moving still in the right 563 00:30:10,680 --> 00:30:12,800 direction. I think these are all very, very 564 00:30:12,800 --> 00:30:16,040 important understanding that we have to have about feedback 565 00:30:16,040 --> 00:30:17,760 loop. So I think thanks for sharing 566 00:30:17,760 --> 00:30:19,920 that. So maybe the other quality 567 00:30:19,920 --> 00:30:23,120 aspect that I want to touch on is about development approach. 568 00:30:23,440 --> 00:30:26,360 So maybe when people talk about development approach, they look 569 00:30:26,360 --> 00:30:29,800 at the developers, how are you writing code or maybe things 570 00:30:29,800 --> 00:30:32,960 like architecture design. So maybe something more that you 571 00:30:32,960 --> 00:30:35,480 touch on in the book, right? Development approach is not just 572 00:30:35,600 --> 00:30:38,520 about writing code, so maybe brief us about this. 573 00:30:39,320 --> 00:30:43,160 So development approaches practice the team and we call it 574 00:30:43,160 --> 00:30:46,160 the delivery team. How do they work together? 575 00:30:46,560 --> 00:30:50,600 How is the team made-up? Is it remote or is it together 576 00:30:50,600 --> 00:30:53,760 like those things will? How the team works doesn't mean 577 00:30:53,760 --> 00:30:55,880 there's a right of room, it just does. 578 00:30:56,360 --> 00:31:00,280 So things like quality ownership, does the team really 579 00:31:00,280 --> 00:31:03,040 think that the testers own quality? 580 00:31:03,440 --> 00:31:06,920 And when we say delivery team, it's programmers, testers, 581 00:31:07,160 --> 00:31:11,640 analysts, product owners, who is on your team and and how do they 582 00:31:11,640 --> 00:31:14,840 do that thinking about what practices they do. 583 00:31:14,840 --> 00:31:18,240 Like if you have a whatever agile point you're using will 584 00:31:18,240 --> 00:31:21,560 depend on the practices, if you're doing Kanban versus Scrum 585 00:31:21,560 --> 00:31:25,360 versus extreme programming versus whatever. 586 00:31:25,560 --> 00:31:29,200 So there will be different practices and we don't specify 587 00:31:29,720 --> 00:31:32,920 those specifically. We just kind of what's important 588 00:31:32,920 --> 00:31:34,920 to you trying to understand what that is. 589 00:31:35,520 --> 00:31:40,280 Do you have some kind of prioritization on your stories 590 00:31:40,520 --> 00:31:42,120 or your features you're bringing in? 591 00:31:42,560 --> 00:31:44,560 How do you handle those, those sorts of things? 592 00:31:44,840 --> 00:31:47,080 Do you know when a story is done? 593 00:31:47,520 --> 00:31:51,080 What does that mean to you? How do you work with delivering 594 00:31:51,080 --> 00:31:54,240 it to production? How does the team work together? 595 00:31:54,400 --> 00:31:56,960 So sorts of things when we're looking at a development 596 00:31:56,960 --> 00:31:59,040 approach is right currently very beginning. 597 00:31:59,480 --> 00:32:03,560 Do you have a mechanism in there for asking the questions right 598 00:32:03,560 --> 00:32:05,920 through to delivery? How do you deliver to 599 00:32:05,920 --> 00:32:07,720 production? What is that? 600 00:32:08,480 --> 00:32:10,480 Yeah. So I think it's really important 601 00:32:10,480 --> 00:32:14,240 that the team actually have a mechanism or the practices in 602 00:32:14,240 --> 00:32:16,120 place, right? So first of all, it's not like 603 00:32:16,120 --> 00:32:18,040 ad hoc, right? Like people just do whatever 604 00:32:18,040 --> 00:32:20,480 practice that they think they want to do, but actually have a 605 00:32:20,480 --> 00:32:23,280 method and approach, right? And then like you also 606 00:32:23,280 --> 00:32:26,920 holistically look at, but just the code aspect, but also like 607 00:32:26,920 --> 00:32:29,280 things like gathering the requirements, right, the 608 00:32:29,280 --> 00:32:31,640 ownership about the code and the testing part. 609 00:32:31,640 --> 00:32:35,000 And also like how do you release that story or features to the 610 00:32:35,000 --> 00:32:37,080 customers, right? And then get the feedback loop 611 00:32:37,480 --> 00:32:40,560 again back to the team. So I think development approach 612 00:32:40,560 --> 00:32:43,520 here is really important because I find so many teams probably 613 00:32:43,680 --> 00:32:46,200 like they just take agile framework, any agile framework 614 00:32:46,200 --> 00:32:48,200 and they think that's the development approach, right? 615 00:32:48,360 --> 00:32:50,600 Take Scrum. So they just say, yeah, we do 616 00:32:50,600 --> 00:32:53,280 stand up retrospectives and you know, product backlog rooming 617 00:32:53,280 --> 00:32:55,240 and things like that. And they think that's enough. 618 00:32:55,680 --> 00:32:59,160 So I think the point here is that it's more beyond just the 619 00:32:59,160 --> 00:33:02,240 code and the framework, but it encompasses so many other 620 00:33:02,240 --> 00:33:05,480 aspects as well. So maybe the other quality 621 00:33:05,480 --> 00:33:08,360 aspects that I'd like to touch on is about the defect 622 00:33:08,360 --> 00:33:10,400 management. Like interestingly, Jenna, in 623 00:33:10,400 --> 00:33:13,280 the beginning you mentioned that you actually thought about 624 00:33:13,280 --> 00:33:15,360 removing this from the quality aspects. 625 00:33:15,600 --> 00:33:18,480 But for people actually to assess quality normally, again, 626 00:33:18,480 --> 00:33:21,320 intuitively, the first thing they they will do is how do we 627 00:33:21,320 --> 00:33:23,280 track defects? How do we lock defects? 628 00:33:23,280 --> 00:33:24,760 How do we know that they are closed? 629 00:33:25,120 --> 00:33:29,440 So maybe explain why defect management is put as lowest 630 00:33:29,440 --> 00:33:31,680 order in the priority. Yeah. 631 00:33:32,200 --> 00:33:36,840 So with defect management, it's a why it's lowest out is because 632 00:33:36,840 --> 00:33:40,040 if we're doing really well in the other areas, we've improved 633 00:33:40,040 --> 00:33:43,280 in a way that the other areas are feeling really strong, then 634 00:33:43,280 --> 00:33:46,560 amount of defects that we have should be going down 635 00:33:46,560 --> 00:33:49,760 dramatically. So we will have less of a need 636 00:33:49,760 --> 00:33:52,240 to track and manage those things. 637 00:33:52,520 --> 00:33:56,160 Certainly, there may be some escapes, but we shouldn't be 638 00:33:56,160 --> 00:33:59,960 going intentionally into releasing things with a lot of 639 00:33:59,960 --> 00:34:03,160 known issues ideally, right. So we're doing really well in 640 00:34:03,160 --> 00:34:05,560 the other areas. Our need for management is 641 00:34:05,680 --> 00:34:08,239 reduced greatly. And one of the ways that we do 642 00:34:08,239 --> 00:34:13,199 that is when we find things when we are in the process of 643 00:34:13,199 --> 00:34:15,520 developing, which includes the programming and the 644 00:34:15,520 --> 00:34:18,239 understanding and the testing, we fix them right away. 645 00:34:18,639 --> 00:34:21,320 We don't consider things to be completed until we've addressed 646 00:34:21,320 --> 00:34:25,360 the issues that we found right, in which case what we have as 647 00:34:25,600 --> 00:34:29,120 defects out in the world are things that are being found by 648 00:34:29,400 --> 00:34:31,400 people outside of the team in general. 649 00:34:31,520 --> 00:34:34,120 And again, there should be a lot less if we're doing other things 650 00:34:34,120 --> 00:34:36,760 really well. So from there, we're looking at 651 00:34:36,760 --> 00:34:41,440 issues around how do we report defects, how do we triage them 652 00:34:41,440 --> 00:34:45,840 and how do we report on them. Some organizations, they will 653 00:34:45,840 --> 00:34:49,000 choose to use defect management tools. 654 00:34:49,000 --> 00:34:52,719 Still, one of the things that we recommend that we've seen work 655 00:34:52,719 --> 00:34:56,679 really well is that defects get prioritized right alongside with 656 00:34:56,679 --> 00:35:00,080 new features. So we're making decisions and 657 00:35:00,400 --> 00:35:05,080 we're storing those things right alongside with any features for 658 00:35:05,080 --> 00:35:07,800 the products that we have in in the team's backlog. 659 00:35:07,800 --> 00:35:10,520 So there's a clear decision about what's more valuable. 660 00:35:10,520 --> 00:35:14,120 This may feature fixing what a customer has reported and that 661 00:35:14,120 --> 00:35:16,480 in itself takes away the need to have a separate defect 662 00:35:16,480 --> 00:35:18,720 management tool. That's one option that we've 663 00:35:18,720 --> 00:35:22,560 both seen work really well. The time that's invested in the 664 00:35:22,560 --> 00:35:25,920 reporting and fixing and triaging, I know early in my 665 00:35:25,920 --> 00:35:30,080 career we spent a lot of time as testers, as programmers, as 666 00:35:30,080 --> 00:35:33,200 project managers, as all of these different roles in 667 00:35:33,200 --> 00:35:36,720 meetings and in sending emails and in dealing with the stuff 668 00:35:36,720 --> 00:35:38,800 because there was a lot of problems, right? 669 00:35:39,120 --> 00:35:42,840 And at one point I was able to track in the organization I was 670 00:35:42,840 --> 00:35:47,480 in of several thousand people, 40 to 50% of people's time was 671 00:35:47,480 --> 00:35:49,040 spent on these activities, right? 672 00:35:49,040 --> 00:35:54,240 So it really, really, really is very helpful to focus on the 673 00:35:54,240 --> 00:35:57,640 other quality aspects in doing them well so that you can get 674 00:35:57,640 --> 00:35:59,720 that time back. Because just focusing on the 675 00:35:59,720 --> 00:36:02,880 defects and managing them and tracking them isn't going to 676 00:36:02,880 --> 00:36:05,200 save you the time and the money that you want to save. 677 00:36:05,520 --> 00:36:09,960 You want to focus on fixing the other quality challenges you 678 00:36:09,960 --> 00:36:12,720 have in your process within your organization. 679 00:36:12,920 --> 00:36:16,040 And that in itself will address that and hopefully reduce it 680 00:36:16,040 --> 00:36:19,200 dramatically, which I did see happen in organizations that I 681 00:36:19,200 --> 00:36:21,960 worked in. Yeah, I'm only going to add one 682 00:36:21,960 --> 00:36:25,520 thing, I think. If you measure the defects, what 683 00:36:25,520 --> 00:36:28,400 tells you how bad the quality is? 684 00:36:28,840 --> 00:36:30,720 It does not tell you how good it is. 685 00:36:31,120 --> 00:36:35,280 Excellent close in color. Wow, that I think that's again 686 00:36:35,280 --> 00:36:37,960 pretty deep, right? So you only know how bad you're 687 00:36:37,960 --> 00:36:39,880 doing, but actually not how good you're doing. 688 00:36:40,040 --> 00:36:42,040 And I think in your book you mentioned that the goal is 689 00:36:42,040 --> 00:36:44,280 actually for defect prevention, right? 690 00:36:44,280 --> 00:36:48,160 Not actually defect detection. I think many people try to 691 00:36:48,320 --> 00:36:51,440 detect a lot of defects, right? Manage it, report that. 692 00:36:51,520 --> 00:36:54,400 I think when you mention about reporting defects, I kind of 693 00:36:54,400 --> 00:36:57,440 like left because in the past I also used to experience those 694 00:36:57,440 --> 00:36:59,680 kind of things and not just just the report, but also the 695 00:36:59,680 --> 00:37:02,560 fighting in between, right? When the testers report 696 00:37:02,560 --> 00:37:05,600 something and developers don't agree, you kind of like fight 697 00:37:05,600 --> 00:37:08,560 instead of prioritizing. So I think all this really 698 00:37:08,560 --> 00:37:11,000 important because in many teams culture, right? 699 00:37:11,000 --> 00:37:14,560 Still the fact management, you know, the Jira or whatever tools 700 00:37:14,560 --> 00:37:18,560 that they use is probably the centre of their quality, so to 701 00:37:18,560 --> 00:37:21,160 speak, right? And I think very importantly in 702 00:37:21,160 --> 00:37:23,320 your book, you also mentioned that we should actually spend 703 00:37:23,320 --> 00:37:26,160 more time in understanding the kind of problems, the features 704 00:37:26,160 --> 00:37:29,640 that we're doing and the kind of testing that we want to build 705 00:37:29,880 --> 00:37:32,960 from the very beginning, right? Not just something that you 706 00:37:32,960 --> 00:37:35,280 threw over the wall or you think about it at the end. 707 00:37:35,520 --> 00:37:38,320 So maybe a little bit on this part, how can people start 708 00:37:38,320 --> 00:37:41,440 thinking about understanding the problem 1st and you know, like 709 00:37:41,440 --> 00:37:44,240 building the test cases in the earlier phase rather than the 710 00:37:44,240 --> 00:37:47,040 last? So I'm going to tell a story 711 00:37:47,040 --> 00:37:50,320 here and people don't think about this necessarily as 712 00:37:50,320 --> 00:37:53,560 testing, but I do it because, yeah, it's well. 713 00:37:54,240 --> 00:37:57,960 But I was working with the team one time and they were all ready 714 00:37:57,960 --> 00:38:00,160 to start on a feature. They were going to have their 715 00:38:00,160 --> 00:38:04,120 kickoff meeting and just start going with this new feature. 716 00:38:04,480 --> 00:38:06,240 Product owner had done a bunch of work. 717 00:38:06,240 --> 00:38:11,240 They had stories ready to go and I had been trying to coach them 718 00:38:11,240 --> 00:38:14,600 a little bit on maybe let's start a little earlier thinking 719 00:38:14,600 --> 00:38:18,400 about some of these things. So I said before we do that, can 720 00:38:18,400 --> 00:38:22,720 we just take time due to the hence an hour and let's build 721 00:38:22,720 --> 00:38:25,560 the mind map. The product owner understands 722 00:38:25,560 --> 00:38:27,560 this feature really, really well. 723 00:38:27,760 --> 00:38:31,440 The team hasn't seen it so much, so they'll be learning about it, 724 00:38:31,440 --> 00:38:33,960 but asking questions, trying to understand. 725 00:38:34,280 --> 00:38:37,440 So can we just have a quick half hour meeting and build a mind 726 00:38:37,440 --> 00:38:41,560 map on what this feature is? And so, you know, the product 727 00:38:41,560 --> 00:38:46,200 owner was a little, I'm not sure, but he agreed and the team 728 00:38:46,200 --> 00:38:49,000 said, OK, we're they're willing to try something new. 729 00:38:49,000 --> 00:38:53,360 So we had this half and we spent half an hour building a mind 730 00:38:53,360 --> 00:38:55,800 map. It was remote, we did it online. 731 00:38:56,080 --> 00:38:59,360 Before we finished that half hour, there were so many 732 00:38:59,360 --> 00:39:03,880 questions that had come up from the team build it, bringing up 733 00:39:03,880 --> 00:39:08,520 risks, asking questions that had not been thought about before 734 00:39:08,880 --> 00:39:13,480 that they actually took that feature off the table and said 735 00:39:13,760 --> 00:39:17,520 we're not ready. So that half hour prevented 736 00:39:17,560 --> 00:39:21,960 probably weeks and weeks and weeks of blocking stories trying 737 00:39:21,960 --> 00:39:24,880 to understand this. They just took it off the table 738 00:39:24,880 --> 00:39:27,560 and went back and started asking some of those questions. 739 00:39:27,960 --> 00:39:33,440 That to me is testing early. We're testing our ideas, we're 740 00:39:33,440 --> 00:39:37,280 testing our understanding, we're exposing risks. 741 00:39:37,960 --> 00:39:39,840 It's just not testing the software. 742 00:39:40,760 --> 00:39:43,680 I think that's a really powerful story that we can learn from, 743 00:39:43,680 --> 00:39:45,560 right? So I think this also comes back 744 00:39:45,560 --> 00:39:47,440 to the holistic testing approach. 745 00:39:47,440 --> 00:39:50,000 I think we covered that in the previous episode as well, right? 746 00:39:50,280 --> 00:39:53,160 So testing is not just testing the code, testing the product, 747 00:39:53,160 --> 00:39:55,840 the feature, but also testing the risk, the ideas, right? 748 00:39:56,080 --> 00:39:58,560 And make it early, as early as possible. 749 00:39:58,560 --> 00:40:00,080 I think it's a very, very important. 750 00:40:00,200 --> 00:40:01,880 So I, I really love the story, right? 751 00:40:01,880 --> 00:40:05,160 So I think it's quite typical in many software teams, right? 752 00:40:05,480 --> 00:40:07,680 Some product owners or stakeholders will just say, OK, 753 00:40:07,760 --> 00:40:11,480 build me this feature like in a few sentence, maybe better if 754 00:40:11,480 --> 00:40:13,480 they have something, I want something. 755 00:40:13,480 --> 00:40:16,160 So that's something, right? But it's always not enough. 756 00:40:16,240 --> 00:40:19,560 They seem to miss the details, the edge cases and maybe the 757 00:40:19,560 --> 00:40:23,840 variance of how the user journey will look like by using those 758 00:40:23,840 --> 00:40:25,640 features. So I think thanks for raising 759 00:40:25,640 --> 00:40:28,120 that. So knowing all these quality 760 00:40:28,200 --> 00:40:31,320 aspects, then the next important thing is actually to conduct the 761 00:40:31,320 --> 00:40:34,400 assessment itself, right? For teams who probably don't 762 00:40:34,400 --> 00:40:37,640 have expertise, they cannot hire coaches like yourself. 763 00:40:37,880 --> 00:40:40,920 How would you advise people? Because I know that you are also 764 00:40:40,920 --> 00:40:43,880 writing the second book, right, To actually help people 765 00:40:43,880 --> 00:40:45,600 facilitate this kind of assessment. 766 00:40:46,280 --> 00:40:48,760 Yeah. So in the first book, the 767 00:40:48,760 --> 00:40:52,200 Assessing Agile Quality Practices, we do have a chapter 768 00:40:52,200 --> 00:40:54,760 devoted to how to conduct a quality assessment. 769 00:40:54,760 --> 00:40:59,400 It's a brief synopsis of what we would recommend and our second 770 00:40:59,440 --> 00:41:02,400 book, A Guide for Facilitating Quality assessments goes into 771 00:41:02,480 --> 00:41:05,760 super detail. Everything that we would 772 00:41:05,760 --> 00:41:10,280 recommend, whether you are an external consultants, assessor, 773 00:41:10,280 --> 00:41:13,400 facilitator or internal, or you are a team member and there's 774 00:41:13,400 --> 00:41:16,200 actually a whole chapter devoted to I'm a team member. 775 00:41:16,200 --> 00:41:17,640 How do we want to do this as a team? 776 00:41:17,640 --> 00:41:20,560 So the steps are gather information. 777 00:41:20,560 --> 00:41:22,920 How do we prepare for the assessments? 778 00:41:22,920 --> 00:41:24,560 Then we actually conduct the assessment. 779 00:41:24,560 --> 00:41:28,240 We gather everything that we need to do and then how do we 780 00:41:28,240 --> 00:41:31,800 put all the information together in a way that is meaningful and 781 00:41:31,800 --> 00:41:34,800 assess all of the information that we pulled together. 782 00:41:35,200 --> 00:41:38,120 And then how do we want to report on the results for the 783 00:41:38,120 --> 00:41:41,240 team's benefit, for the organization's benefits and then 784 00:41:41,240 --> 00:41:43,280 any follow up activities that you might want to do. 785 00:41:43,280 --> 00:41:47,160 So there's a lot involved with each of those steps, whether 786 00:41:47,160 --> 00:41:50,240 it's how do you identify who do include in the assessment? 787 00:41:50,560 --> 00:41:54,240 Do you have examples of like stories of tests of code maybe 788 00:41:54,240 --> 00:41:56,560 that you want to look at? Do they do things like mind 789 00:41:56,560 --> 00:41:58,800 mapping? If so, like see examples of 790 00:41:58,800 --> 00:41:59,880 that. I don't know if there are 791 00:41:59,880 --> 00:42:02,160 examples. I used to work for a company who 792 00:42:02,160 --> 00:42:04,680 we did do that sort of thing. And I know what Jana does too. 793 00:42:04,680 --> 00:42:06,640 But that's not true everywhere, right? 794 00:42:06,840 --> 00:42:10,080 But if they have examples, you want to see that and setting up 795 00:42:10,080 --> 00:42:12,480 all of the meeting invitations, getting the right people in the 796 00:42:12,480 --> 00:42:15,400 room, whether you're in a room physically or doing it 797 00:42:15,400 --> 00:42:17,920 virtually. And there's also things like 798 00:42:17,920 --> 00:42:21,760 doing one-on-one discussions with people, like a selection of 799 00:42:21,760 --> 00:42:25,920 subset of people or you're doing group interviews with say maybe 800 00:42:25,920 --> 00:42:29,640 all of the testers or all of the managers who are involved or 801 00:42:29,640 --> 00:42:32,040 whomever it makes sense to have those discussions with. 802 00:42:32,040 --> 00:42:34,960 But there's a lot of sources that we're pulling together. 803 00:42:35,200 --> 00:42:37,600 One of the really bigger activities that we would do in 804 00:42:37,600 --> 00:42:41,000 terms of conducting is what is called a process retrospective. 805 00:42:41,000 --> 00:42:45,400 So understanding from the very beginning of our project that we 806 00:42:45,400 --> 00:42:48,440 work on all the way through to delivery, what are all of the 807 00:42:48,440 --> 00:42:53,040 steps and stages and activities that take place to understand 808 00:42:53,360 --> 00:42:57,000 like how it all fits together with all of the people involved 809 00:42:57,320 --> 00:43:01,800 in the room together. And often times you will see 810 00:43:01,960 --> 00:43:06,240 light bulbs or questions or confusion pieces go off around, 811 00:43:06,240 --> 00:43:08,520 I need to know that what's happening or what do you mean 812 00:43:08,520 --> 00:43:11,840 that's what you do next. Like it's a really great way for 813 00:43:11,840 --> 00:43:16,000 the whole team and the project team or the delivery team to get 814 00:43:16,000 --> 00:43:19,640 on the same page about what is actually going on because they 815 00:43:19,640 --> 00:43:22,240 don't often all know that. Right? 816 00:43:22,760 --> 00:43:23,960 Yeah. And then pulling it together 817 00:43:23,960 --> 00:43:26,680 into reports. We actually provide a tool that 818 00:43:26,680 --> 00:43:28,880 you can do that with. For those who've purchased the 819 00:43:28,880 --> 00:43:31,920 book, they can get the link. It's a free downloadable 820 00:43:31,920 --> 00:43:37,080 spreadsheet that you can use to help you to do your assessment 821 00:43:37,640 --> 00:43:42,960 and analyze your results. So yeah, for us it's like, yes, 822 00:43:42,960 --> 00:43:45,560 we can do assessments. I know Janet's not anymore, 823 00:43:45,560 --> 00:43:49,920 she's in her retirement case. But like myself and her other 824 00:43:49,920 --> 00:43:53,080 co-author, Lisa Crispin, and like anyone who's picked up the 825 00:43:53,080 --> 00:43:56,560 book, like frankly, you can pick it up and run with it and be 826 00:43:56,560 --> 00:43:58,400 able to facilitate an assessment. 827 00:43:58,760 --> 00:44:02,640 But you're more than welcome to involve people who have done 828 00:44:02,680 --> 00:44:05,880 these before too, to learn from others who've done this a few 829 00:44:05,880 --> 00:44:08,560 times. I like the way that you when you 830 00:44:08,560 --> 00:44:10,600 describe a process retrospectives, right? 831 00:44:10,600 --> 00:44:12,800 So sounds like a value stream mapping by the way, right? 832 00:44:13,320 --> 00:44:15,400 Maybe it's kind of it's a little bit. 833 00:44:15,520 --> 00:44:17,480 There, it's similar. Similar, yeah. 834 00:44:17,520 --> 00:44:20,120 Yeah. So it's always a very revealing 835 00:44:20,120 --> 00:44:23,320 session where people start to understand, oh, what do you mean 836 00:44:23,320 --> 00:44:26,080 that we have this or what do you mean we are doing those kind of 837 00:44:26,080 --> 00:44:27,800 stuffs that are unnecessary, right? 838 00:44:28,080 --> 00:44:29,760 And it's not just for the team, right? 839 00:44:29,840 --> 00:44:33,200 The leaders also, they sometimes don't actually have a good 840 00:44:33,200 --> 00:44:35,960 understanding what the team is actually doing and what are the 841 00:44:35,960 --> 00:44:40,120 process involved or maybe those kind of habitual things that are 842 00:44:40,120 --> 00:44:44,040 probably legacy or bureaucracy. So actually they may not even 843 00:44:44,040 --> 00:44:46,520 need to do that anymore, right? You can take the decision to 844 00:44:46,520 --> 00:44:48,680 actually remove that from the process. 845 00:44:49,160 --> 00:44:51,440 Maybe any kind of interesting letting. 846 00:44:51,440 --> 00:44:53,920 I know that probably you have done this assessments a few 847 00:44:53,920 --> 00:44:58,600 times with your customers. Any kind of revealing insights 848 00:44:58,680 --> 00:45:01,680 or revelation from your customers after they're doing 849 00:45:01,680 --> 00:45:04,360 this kind of assessment? Maybe if you can share one or 850 00:45:04,360 --> 00:45:07,440 two. I think one of the biggest 851 00:45:07,840 --> 00:45:11,160 things that I've seen the most often actually is the 852 00:45:11,160 --> 00:45:15,840 programmers saying, I didn't know that you did all of those 853 00:45:15,840 --> 00:45:20,240 things because testing is always, it seems to be one of 854 00:45:20,240 --> 00:45:24,000 those hidden things. It's just magic. 855 00:45:24,360 --> 00:45:27,760 And so when you start putting up all of the little things that is 856 00:45:27,760 --> 00:45:30,320 being done, you will get a lot of that. 857 00:45:30,680 --> 00:45:33,560 I just didn't know we can help you with that. 858 00:45:34,040 --> 00:45:36,000 That's what you want to hear, right? 859 00:45:36,480 --> 00:45:39,920 Yeah. I mean, I've heard that one too. 860 00:45:40,320 --> 00:45:44,360 Absolutely. I mean, the biggest aha really 861 00:45:44,360 --> 00:45:50,120 is just having it all there together in one visual picture. 862 00:45:50,520 --> 00:45:53,840 It is really just a big aha for everyone in the room about what 863 00:45:53,840 --> 00:45:56,360 it really takes to do the work that we've been asked to do. 864 00:45:56,360 --> 00:45:58,960 That sounds like it's just, oh, just put this change in really 865 00:45:58,960 --> 00:46:01,960 quickly, la, da, da, And it's all beautiful, right? 866 00:46:01,960 --> 00:46:04,040 It's not that simple. It's not that easy. 867 00:46:04,360 --> 00:46:07,200 And when we know all of the steps that are involved, yeah, 868 00:46:07,200 --> 00:46:11,800 there are ways that we can find a way to accelerate in healthy 869 00:46:11,800 --> 00:46:14,920 ways some of those things by automating the right things at 870 00:46:14,920 --> 00:46:18,120 the right time. But we have to be mindful about 871 00:46:18,120 --> 00:46:21,080 how we build quality into those steps too, right? 872 00:46:21,080 --> 00:46:24,080 So it's not just we snap our fingers and it's out the door, 873 00:46:24,080 --> 00:46:26,200 right? Even with things like bringing 874 00:46:26,240 --> 00:46:30,360 AI in into organizations now, like there are things that can 875 00:46:30,360 --> 00:46:33,080 be beneficial and helpful, which I mean, we didn't touch on in 876 00:46:33,080 --> 00:46:36,080 this book, but it's the same, it's automation, right? 877 00:46:36,240 --> 00:46:38,880 How do we bring automation and to support us and help us? 878 00:46:38,880 --> 00:46:41,840 And there are considerations that we need to make to ensure 879 00:46:41,840 --> 00:46:46,040 that we're making good choices. So regardless of how we look at 880 00:46:46,040 --> 00:46:49,120 the process and see how big it is and how involved the news and 881 00:46:49,120 --> 00:46:52,600 how complicated and all of these lines of communication and 882 00:46:52,600 --> 00:46:56,160 feedback loops that need to happen all over, ensuring that 883 00:46:56,160 --> 00:47:00,280 we are front loading and dressing quality rather than 884 00:47:00,280 --> 00:47:03,040 leaving it to the end is is really what we want to see 885 00:47:03,040 --> 00:47:07,320 people doing so that they are able to be as effective as 886 00:47:07,320 --> 00:47:10,760 possible. And in my experience, an 887 00:47:10,760 --> 00:47:14,360 activity like this helps people to start to make that connection 888 00:47:14,600 --> 00:47:18,120 and understand how to get there 'cause now that they've looked 889 00:47:18,120 --> 00:47:20,160 at it, they've had an assessment, they've gotten their 890 00:47:20,160 --> 00:47:23,960 results back and they're like, oh, OK, we're really struggling 891 00:47:23,960 --> 00:47:27,720 and like development approach testing rats and feedback loops. 892 00:47:27,720 --> 00:47:30,320 Let's start with feedback loops first and then maybe the other 893 00:47:30,320 --> 00:47:34,040 ones will kind of domino effects down right? 894 00:47:34,040 --> 00:47:37,000 And then they can make conscious choices about that, but like 895 00:47:37,000 --> 00:47:40,720 having those results and really understanding where they are and 896 00:47:40,720 --> 00:47:42,840 why they're having the problems that they're having. 897 00:47:43,480 --> 00:47:46,120 Yeah, that's the big AHA that I see with teams and 898 00:47:46,120 --> 00:47:48,600 organizations. And I would say this management 899 00:47:48,600 --> 00:47:51,840 in particular, because they often don't understand 900 00:47:51,920 --> 00:47:54,440 everything that's involved. And this gives them something 901 00:47:54,440 --> 00:47:57,840 tangible to hold on to, to understand how they can get from 902 00:47:58,200 --> 00:48:02,480 this unknown like chaotic. I don't know why we are here, 903 00:48:02,480 --> 00:48:06,400 but we're still consistently not doing a good job into This is 904 00:48:06,560 --> 00:48:09,040 why we are here. And these are the steps that we 905 00:48:09,040 --> 00:48:10,560 can take to get to where we want to go. 906 00:48:11,160 --> 00:48:14,160 I mean, there's a lot of ideas, but all of them, there's a few 907 00:48:14,160 --> 00:48:15,840 key things there. I hope that's too dope. 908 00:48:16,520 --> 00:48:19,440 Yeah, I think it will be really cool if every team has this kind 909 00:48:19,440 --> 00:48:22,160 of assessment, You know, they put together all these kind of 910 00:48:22,160 --> 00:48:24,240 quality aspects where they are at. 911 00:48:24,240 --> 00:48:27,120 I think, again, a lot of teams probably don't even understand 912 00:48:27,120 --> 00:48:29,760 where they're at, right? And putting this together, 913 00:48:30,160 --> 00:48:32,560 putting it as a map, right. And I think the most important 914 00:48:32,560 --> 00:48:35,400 thing also like the road map, where, for example, if you're in 915 00:48:35,400 --> 00:48:38,000 the beginning stage, you know, there's a road map that you can 916 00:48:38,000 --> 00:48:41,280 aspire to, to become the innovating dimension, right? 917 00:48:41,520 --> 00:48:44,640 So I think having this kind of road map that you put in place 918 00:48:44,640 --> 00:48:47,480 for a continuous improvement process within the team will be 919 00:48:47,480 --> 00:48:49,360 really, really something that is cool. 920 00:48:49,360 --> 00:48:52,320 I tried to build that. I know it's probably fail more 921 00:48:52,320 --> 00:48:55,360 than a successful one, but I think, yeah, it's really hard to 922 00:48:55,360 --> 00:48:57,040 come up with this kind of assessment model. 923 00:48:57,320 --> 00:49:00,720 And I encourage people to check out Janet's and Selena's book, 924 00:49:00,720 --> 00:49:02,840 right? And maybe try to use that to 925 00:49:02,840 --> 00:49:05,360 assess where you are. So we reached the end of our 926 00:49:05,360 --> 00:49:07,560 conversation. But before I let you go, I have 927 00:49:07,560 --> 00:49:09,880 one last question. Janet, maybe you still remember 928 00:49:09,880 --> 00:49:11,920 last time I asked this. I call this 3 technical 929 00:49:11,920 --> 00:49:14,960 leadership wisdom. So think of it like the last 930 00:49:14,960 --> 00:49:16,560 advice that you want to give to the listeners. 931 00:49:16,880 --> 00:49:19,800 Maybe if you can share the version of three technical 932 00:49:19,800 --> 00:49:21,560 leadership wisdom from any of you. 933 00:49:22,560 --> 00:49:26,960 OK, I'll give one because it comes right out of what we just 934 00:49:26,960 --> 00:49:30,040 said, what Selena just said, visualize. 935 00:49:30,600 --> 00:49:34,280 Visualize, whatever, whenever you possibly can. 936 00:49:34,640 --> 00:49:39,240 Because for example, if you can see a process, then you can 937 00:49:39,240 --> 00:49:42,160 discuss it and decide where you want to take it from now. 938 00:49:42,800 --> 00:49:47,480 So I'm a big fan of visualizing and trying to draw a picture of 939 00:49:47,480 --> 00:49:50,720 it, where there's a mind map, a flow diagram, whatever makes 940 00:49:50,720 --> 00:49:53,280 sense. There's so many things that we 941 00:49:53,280 --> 00:49:57,800 could add, I would say, and working with reality I think is 942 00:49:57,800 --> 00:50:01,440 really important. And the tools, the model and 943 00:50:01,440 --> 00:50:03,720 some of the tools that we talked about around assessments, 944 00:50:04,040 --> 00:50:08,000 including visual, like visualizing, but where you are, 945 00:50:08,360 --> 00:50:11,400 like if you just got dropped out of a plane with a blindfold on 946 00:50:11,400 --> 00:50:13,880 and you don't know where you are in the world, you want to figure 947 00:50:13,880 --> 00:50:16,160 out where you are before you make plans about what to do 948 00:50:16,160 --> 00:50:18,080 next, right? And it's the same within the 949 00:50:18,080 --> 00:50:21,080 context of your organization and the teams and your products, 950 00:50:21,080 --> 00:50:25,560 like taking sometime and it feels like a slow down and 951 00:50:25,560 --> 00:50:29,080 you're too busy to to do that. But taking that time to know 952 00:50:29,080 --> 00:50:32,200 where you are, know your options for getting to where you want to 953 00:50:32,200 --> 00:50:36,480 go is really important. And I see a lot of teams and 954 00:50:36,480 --> 00:50:38,440 organizations struggle to do that. 955 00:50:38,440 --> 00:50:43,200 And that's why consultants and coaches have jobs because we 956 00:50:43,200 --> 00:50:46,520 help facilitate that from assess to understand where you are and 957 00:50:46,520 --> 00:50:49,440 where do you want to go next. So yeah, that's really important 958 00:50:49,440 --> 00:50:51,240 to do. I'm not going to add a third 959 00:50:51,240 --> 00:50:53,600 one, which I'm sure Selena will agree with. 960 00:50:54,120 --> 00:50:57,840 Don't be afraid to question, especially if something is 961 00:50:57,840 --> 00:51:02,800 making you uncomfortable or is pushing your own ethics, your 962 00:51:02,800 --> 00:51:05,600 own morals. Sometimes it's it's just 963 00:51:05,600 --> 00:51:08,840 something and you're scared to ask that question because you 964 00:51:08,840 --> 00:51:13,200 think it's a dumb question. But often that's the thing that 965 00:51:13,200 --> 00:51:18,640 can make a team just stop and say we never thought of that. 966 00:51:18,880 --> 00:51:21,600 So break out of your comfort zone and ask the question. 967 00:51:22,880 --> 00:51:26,680 One reframer that is like of courage, but it's not even that 968 00:51:26,680 --> 00:51:28,880 it's, you know, having the willingness to sit in the 969 00:51:28,880 --> 00:51:32,160 uncomfortable space that you're in and sitting in uncertainty 970 00:51:32,520 --> 00:51:34,840 and with the questions that you're asking. 971 00:51:35,040 --> 00:51:38,880 Don't ask why. Questions go a little deeper 972 00:51:38,880 --> 00:51:42,120 than that. Yeah, it kind of like also shows 973 00:51:42,120 --> 00:51:43,960 vulnerability, right? I think Brené Brown has this 974 00:51:43,960 --> 00:51:46,440 concept, right? So the courage is actually the 975 00:51:46,440 --> 00:51:48,320 courage to actually be vulnerable, right? 976 00:51:48,320 --> 00:51:50,680 Show vulnerability and ask these kind of questions, right? 977 00:51:50,920 --> 00:51:53,560 So I think it's really important in a team where you have a lot 978 00:51:53,560 --> 00:51:56,560 of psychological safety, this will be probably a key thing 979 00:51:56,640 --> 00:51:59,240 where you can start being a high performing one. 980 00:51:59,720 --> 00:52:02,040 So really beautiful technique wisdom. 981 00:52:02,040 --> 00:52:04,760 So for people who want to check out the book or they want to 982 00:52:04,760 --> 00:52:07,000 learn more, any kind of resources that you have 983 00:52:07,000 --> 00:52:08,920 available online. Yeah. 984 00:52:08,920 --> 00:52:12,920 So we have both books are available for purchase on Lean 985 00:52:12,920 --> 00:52:15,720 Pub. So you can look up our names or 986 00:52:15,720 --> 00:52:18,400 QPM, both books will be coming up. 987 00:52:18,400 --> 00:52:21,680 So assessing actual quality practices with QPM and a guide 988 00:52:21,680 --> 00:52:23,360 for facilitating quality assessments. 989 00:52:23,680 --> 00:52:27,640 Both books are also available for purchase on Amazon worldwide 990 00:52:27,920 --> 00:52:30,440 as a physical copy. So if you want a physical one, 991 00:52:30,440 --> 00:52:31,680 that's where you can go buy that. 992 00:52:31,880 --> 00:52:33,840 Otherwise website is forthcoming. 993 00:52:33,840 --> 00:52:36,560 That is their focus for the next few months. 994 00:52:37,040 --> 00:52:41,400 And yeah, otherwise you can find more about me on LinkedIn. 995 00:52:41,560 --> 00:52:43,240 That's Selena, Gillespie and Janice. 996 00:52:43,800 --> 00:52:45,040 Find me pretty much your name wrong. 997 00:52:47,760 --> 00:52:51,280 My website is Janet Gregory ca.ca. 998 00:52:51,840 --> 00:52:55,520 So yeah, from there you can find me anywhere, but if you Google 999 00:52:55,520 --> 00:52:57,880 me I usually come up pretty quick, so. 1000 00:52:58,440 --> 00:53:01,560 Yeah, I can attest to that. So your name and Lisa Crispin 1001 00:53:01,760 --> 00:53:04,360 are always like the thought leaders in the testing space. 1002 00:53:04,760 --> 00:53:07,480 So I'll make sure to put all those resources you mentioned on 1003 00:53:07,480 --> 00:53:09,720 the show notes, right. Thank you again so much for this 1004 00:53:09,720 --> 00:53:11,680 conversation. I hope people learn a lot of 1005 00:53:11,680 --> 00:53:14,800 things about quality aspects and the dimensions and people start 1006 00:53:14,800 --> 00:53:17,680 to assess where they're at so that you can improve from where 1007 00:53:17,680 --> 00:53:21,120 you're at to something that you can aspire to become in the 1008 00:53:21,120 --> 00:53:22,800 future. So thanks again for your time. 1009 00:53:22,800 --> 00:53:24,840 Thank. You very much for having us. 1010 00:53:59,760 --> 00:53:59,840 The.