It's about quality, not testing

Why shifting the conversation from bugs to quality changes everything

When QA roles focus too much on testing, especially finding bugs, they risk being seen as less valuable to engineering teams. We get pushed to the end of the process and are seen as just testers, not collaborators. That mindset not only sidelines us but also narrows what quality really means.

It’s no wonder QA is often left out of early discussions, when we’re seen as the final check, we’re excluded from the start.

From testing to quality

What we need to do is shift the narrative from testing to quality. More specifically, it means helping teams understand how quality is created, maintained, and lost within socio-technical systems. That's not to say that QA's no longer do testing or, more accurately, inspect for quality, but that the value lies in helping teams build and maintain quality, not just reporting whether it’s present.

How do we make this shift from testing to quality?

This is not likely to be an easy shift for most organisations without leadership buy-in. There is a good chance…