Creating a Culture of Quality

The 11th (and final) question in the Test Test asks if the organization has a culture of quality. Does everyone care about quality, or do they consider quality to be the test team's job?

If everyone doesn't care about quality, how do you get them to start caring about quality. You could change their pay structure so they only get paid if customers are happy and don't find bugs, but I doubt that approach would work. Similar "penalties" for low quality are probably also not optimal solutions. A better solution may be to try to get people excited about quality - give them a chance to be proud of the software they're building. But that probably won't work for everyone either.

So, try something else, then try something else. Do whatever you can to get everyone on the team to care about quality. Companies like GE and Toyota have built quality cultures - there's no reason every single software team can't do the same. You have to start small and work at it. Then, you have to keep on working at it.

Culture is difficult to change, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't try. It's almost always worth it in the end.