Speaking Quality Across the Whole System
Quality work has never belonged to testers alone. As software development accelerates, quality activities increasingly fall to designers, product managers, and engineers who may not see themselves as part of the "testing story." We expect them to own quality, yet often fail to provide the bridge to get them there. In this talk, Huib and Chris explore how to practise quality with non-testers, drawing on shared experiences across diverse organisations.
To make quality meaningful, we must dismantle the "boxes" we’ve built: the silos, rigid frameworks, and imaginary boundaries of "inside" and "outside" the box. Using a systems thinking lens, we argue for meeting people where they are—speaking their language and building narratives that connect quality to risks and real-world outcomes.
We will explore the tension between critical systems thinking and actionable delivery. While a broad quality engineering perspective helps us see the whole system, being too theoretical makes action difficult. Practitioners must balance both, using cautious optimism and decisive humility to navigate uncertainty. We do not know everything; pretending we do only limits learning and collaboration.
Delivered as a conversational interview between the speakers, this session combines storytelling and shared reflections. We draw from real examples of working with non-testers, the challenges faced, and the adaptations that helped quality become a shared responsibility.