From Siloed Processes to a Culture of Quality: Why It’s a CIO’s Priority

“Quality First” sounds like it could be a generalised marketing platitude to promise customers everything and nothing. But what happens when a business adopts an aggressive focus on implementing high quality across every level of their organisation?

That’s exactly what a quality-first culture entails. More than simply developing great products and services, a quality-first organisation embeds excellence through all their processes. From people to software to infrastructure, these businesses develop an integrated quality culture to ensure everything is engineered to the highest standard.

The result of focusing on high quality processes is, invariably, high-quality products and customer-facing services.

The business case for quality

It is true that the quest for quality will involve some degree of investment. For any executive not on board with the quality-first culture, the focus on short-term goals, may make this investment unjustifiable. But for the CIO, understanding the long-term strategic value of a culture of quality is essential.

The good news is that the business case for cultivating a culture of quality is compelling.

Cost savings

Concerns about investment costs can be quickly dispelled once you understand the potential savings on offer. These include:

• Fewer errors and rework – worth up to $147 million according to some estimates.
• Fewer fines and compensation payments when all work is completed to regulatory standards.
• Reduced operating costs due to increased efficiency.

Managing and optimising IT budgets is always easier when there is some contingency left over.

Customer satisfaction (and loyalty)

It’s not rocket science – customers love high quality products and services. And it is a combination of product and customer service that keeps them coming back for more.

Surveys consistently show that it costs 5-7x more to attract new clients as it does to retain an existing one. So that’s another cost saving to consider.

It’s also worth remembering the impact that IT failures can have on the brand. Building reliable, secure systems is a vital step towards avoiding outages that destroy customer loyalty.

Operational efficiencies

Often, rework is a result of human error caused by improperly defined processes. Fostering a culture of quality will encourage employees to work smarter and to take responsibility for maintaining high standards for their sphere of influence.

Quality tools will further increase efficiency, allowing you to identify opportunities for automation for instance. Removing human interference will allow you to accelerate processes and maintain consistently high quality throughout. Done correctly, quality allows you to embrace innovation and stability simultaneously.

Leading from the top

Culture is modelled by the C-suite, their behaviour serving as an example for the rest of the organisation to follow. Here’s a step-by-step guide to developing a quality-first culture in your business:

1. Secure leadership buy-in

Delivering quality starts at the top. The CIO and fellow C-suite team must embrace and model a commitment to high quality in every area of operation.

2. Align business units

Alignment between business units is undoubtedly part of your overarching strategy already. However, without greater alignment – and collaboration – it will be impossible to develop cross-functional excellence.

3. Train employees

What does quality look like? That’s the question your employees will be asking as you begin to cultivate a quality-first culture. Training will be essential, helping your workforce understand what quality looks like, how it is achieved and their own role in helping deliver it.

Who does quality culture right?

What does a successful quality-first culture look like? Consider these organisations who promote quality as a core value:

Salesforce

Automation frameworks are invaluable for reducing manual testing requirements, particularly in a complex Salesforce environment. According to researchers, the average testing team spends approximately 42 hours per sprint cycle managing test maintenance and investigating false positives. This intervention increases development time and cost.

By adding artificial intelligence into the test automation framework, Salesforce users have realised significant gains. Test reliability has jumped from 51% to 91%, defect prediction rates have improved by 140% and critical bug reduction is now 157% better than when using traditional systems. On every metric, AI-powered systems have delivered at least 56% improvement, making Salesforce environments more secure, more reliable and more cost effective.

Adobe

In order to ensure security is built into every aspect of product development, Adobe has created the Secure Product Lifecycle (SPLC). The SPLC encompasses several hundred security activities that are scheduled at key stages of the product lifecycle from initial design through development and QA testing to final deployment.

Using clear, repeatable processes, the SPLC is under constant evolution, allowing Adobe to accelerate testing and enhance security as the threat landscape changes. The SPLC framework has been credited with helping to improve the quality of Adobe products, and has been instrumental in the implementation and growth of a ‘security by design’ corporate culture that guides everything they do.

Looking toward a quality-first future

Far from being a ‘nice to have’, quality is the defining feature which separates you from your competitors. A quality-first culture is non-negotiable – fortunately the rewards more than compensate for time, resource and financial investment. But it is the way that your team thinks about quality that will have the greatest effect.

Here at Testhouse we partner with companies to establish a quality-first culture that permeates everything they do. From the first line of code to ongoing maintenance of the finished product, our partners achieve their goals with excellence.

We’ll help you re-engineer processes using best-of-breed tools like Frameium to empower employees, reduce defects and accelerate release cycles. And by starting with a future-ready goal, your business will continue to uphold quality standards, even as processes and targets evolve. Because the efficiency gains you make today will have an impact on profitability long into the future.

To learn more about building a quality-first culture that maximises operational efficiency and delivers long-term cost savings, download our eBook for a practical guide to embedding a culture of quality across your organisation.

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