What do you mean... a Quality Owner?!

“What do you mean… a Quality Owner?!” – I get asked this a lot, after I tell someone what my role is.

Well, my role has everything to do with how the company I work for has evolved over time and the steps we took to be where we are now. We used to address quality and testing in a way that was not ideal for us. But when we went through a reorganization that impacted everyone, from project teams to component teams, while embracing DevOps and continuous delivery, we saw this as an opportunity for change. We realized that building a complex cloud product meant we had to look at quality as a shared responsibility.

And so, I became the first quality owner. That means I’m the quality advocate and mentor in my team, empowering us to make quality decisions and manage risk. This role is still pretty new to us, and despite some initial skepticism, today everyone recognizes its advantages. We even have product teams fighting to have quality owners in their teams. Not literally, of course.

In this session, I will talk about this role in depth, and I will also share how transitioning from project to component teams changes people’s relationship with testing, as well as the benefits of quality as a responsibility shared by all.