How do you deliver quality software products? Lots of automated testing? Go all in with TDD? Build a comprehensive manual test procedure? Invest in pair programming? Wait for your customers to find problems and fight the fires as they pop up?
It’s easy to focus on a particular testing technique and assume quality delivery. Find bugs, fix bugs, ship software.
But quality is about much more than that. Quality software comes from teams who care about quality as much as it comes from processes that seek to assure quality.
Quality isn’t just about lack of bugs. It’s about how your system makes your customers feel - stability, security, consistency, usability, availability, design are all key parts of that experience.
It’s important to consider all quality across the whole system on a spectrum - which aspects of quality are non-negotiable in your product? Which are important enough to hold a release? Which can be released, but need to be fixed later? What types of issues do you just not care about?
Define quality requirements and processes based on the overall priorities.
Decide what quality means for your product, customers and team and have a plan to deliver.