#182 - Building a Quality-Driven Culture: Enhancing Quality Practices Using QPAM - Janet Gregory & Selena Delesie
Tech Lead Journal
Exploring Quality Assessment Models and Psychological Safety in Teams
This chapter explores the importance of tailoring quality assessment models to suit the specific needs of each team and organization, promoting a culture of improvement rather than simply chasing metrics. It highlights the significance of psychological safety within teams to cultivate a quality-focused environment.
“We have 10 different aspects of quality, and testing is just a subset of activities in the overall quality culture. You need to have a good testing practice, but it’s just a tiny part of quality culture."
Janet Gregory and Selena Delesie are the co-authors of “Assessing Agile Quality Practices Using QPAM”. In this episode, we discuss how to elevate and improve our organization’s quality culture and practices. Janet and Selena begin by explaining what quality culture truly entails, distinguishing it from a narrow focus on testing. They describe the QPAM model, breaking down its 10 quality aspects and 4 dimensions to provide you with a comprehensive model for assessing your quality practices.
Gain insights on why social and sociotechnical aspects of quality are more critical than technical ones, and explore some quality aspects such as feedback loops, development approach, and defect management. Janet and Selena also elaborate on why they consider defect management to be of the lowest priority and provide reasoning for their decision.
Whether you’re a seasoned quality professional or a team leader striving for continuous improvement, this episode contains valuable takeaways to help you build a quality-driven culture that delivers high-quality results. Tune in to learn actionable tips for conducting your own quality assessment and driving quality transformation in your organization.
Listen out for:
- Career Journey - [00:02:10]
- Quality Culture - [00:04:58]
- Quality & Testing - [00:06:42]
- Quality Assessment - [00:08:37]
- 10 Quality Aspects - [00:11:00]
- The Importance of Sociotechnical - [00:13:30]
- QPAM is Not a Maturity Model - [00:16:11]
- 4 Dimensions - [00:19:52]
- Feedback Loops - [00:23:09]
- Explaining Feedback Loops - [00:25:45]
- Development Approach - [00:30:18]
- Defect Management - [00:33:03]
- Understanding the Problem - [00:37:19]
- Conducting a Quality Assessment - [00:40:26]
- Insights from Past Assessments - [00:44:49]
- 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:49:04]
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Janet Gregory’s Bio
Janet Gregory is a testing and process consultant with DragonFire Inc. She specializes in showing agile teams how testing activities are necessary to develop good quality products. She works with teams to transition to agile development and has taught agile testing courses worldwide. She contributes articles to publications and enjoys sharing her experiences.
Selena Delesie’s Bio
As a coach, consultant, and trainer, Selena helps leaders and executives shift into healthy leadership, business agility and to engage the strengths and passions of their team to produce a highly creative, productive and vibrant workforce. She is a published author and invited speaker on agility, quality and leadership practices. Selena is co-author, with Janet Gregory, of the books Assessing Agile Quality Practices with QPAM, and A Guide for Facilitating Quality Assessments, as well as a contributing author to other published works.
Follow Janet and Selena:
- Janet’s Twitter / X - @janetgregoryca
- Janet’s LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/janetgregory
- Janet’s Website - janetgregory.ca
- Agile Tester - agiletester.ca
- Selena’s LinkedIn – linkedin.com/in/selenadelesie
- Quality Assessments using QPAM bundle – https://leanpub.com/b/qualityassessmentsusingqpam
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