Different disciplines can build quality at various organisational levels to promote a quality culture.
Top takeaway
Building quality into different levels of an organisation enables it to cultivate a Culture of Quality that takes a more holistic view of people, processes and products. This approach can help create a healthy socio-technical system. To improve quality across all levels, you can use quality engineering as a philosophy, framework and tool and consider your position and influence within your organisation.
By building quality via a philosophy, a framework and tools, you begin to nudge the socio-technical system at the levels of thinking, behaving and acting. This results in each level boosting the other, fostering a culture of quality throughout an organisation.
Fostering a culture of quality through outputs and outcomes
Towards the end of that post, I asked who is responsible for this work, which I'd like to discuss in this post. To do so, your current role and circle of influence within the organisation come into play.
Working in Teams
Suppose your current role is working within an engineering team. In that case, this is where you will have the most significant influence. For instance, say you're a Developer, Tester, Delivery Manager or some other role that works exclusively with one team daily.
This likely means that your core responsibilities will be to that team. Therefore, you'll be in the strongest position to help build quality into the product via the skills of your discipline. Working in teams is typically where Quality Engineering as a tool will be most appropriate.
Working in a team means you can use tools and techniques to build quality directly into the product or service being built and maintained by the team.
As a team member, you'll also have discipline peers in other teams and departments, allowing you to learn and share ideas. With this approach, you can begin laying the foundation of a learning culture within teams and further improve your ability to build quality into the product.
Team members build quality into products using quality engineering as a tool approach.
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Working as a Discipline Manager
If your current role is as a Discipline Manager, your greatest influence will be those you manage. For instance, Engineering Managers, Test Managers/Test Leads, and Delivery Leads line manage Developers, Testers and Delivery Managers, respectively.
Being a Discipline Manager means one of your core responsibilities will be to those people, and one of your tasks will be personal development. While you wouldn't want to tell the people you line manage what to do, you will be helping them with how they do it. Managing people allows you to develop their understanding of how quality can be created, maintained and lost at the process level.
Working as a Discipline Manager is typically where Quality Engineering as a framework will be most appropriate, as you can coach and mentor the people you manage to build quality into their teams' processes. Your line reports will then be able to use that knowledge to adapt and create tools and techniques that allow them to use Quality Engineering as a tool.
As a Discipline Manager, you'll have a peer group of other Discipline Managers. This peer group is an excellent opportunity to see how they build quality via frameworks and what approaches and techniques their disciplines use. Collaborating with other Discipline Managers further develops a learning culture within the discipline.
Discipline managers build quality into processes using quality engineering as a framework approach.
Working as a Head of Department
If your role is a Head of Department, then your most significant influence will be at that departmental level. For instance, the Head of Engineering will have the greatest influence on those below them.
Operating at the Head of Department level means that one of your core responsibilities will be to set the direction and tone of your department. Therefore, you'll be in the strongest position to build quality into the culture.
Working as a Head of a Department is typically where Quality Engineering as a philosophy is most appropriate, as your role allows you to influence the department's thoughts via the values and behaviours you set.
As a Head of Department, you will also influence your peer group of other Heads of Departments, allowing you to nudge other parts of the organisation towards a Culture of Quality. Collaborating with other Heads of Department and line managing those below you further develops a learning culture throughout a department.
Heads of department build quality into people using quality engineering as a philosophy approach.
How does this help?
By building quality into the levels of team, disciplines and department, you start to foster a culture of quality. At the departmental level, you influence how people think about quality. At the discipline level, you influence people's behaviour towards quality. At the team level, you influence how people create quality.
Each level influences the level below it and acts as a feedback loop to the level above it. For instance, creating a Culture of Quality by leveraging Quality Engineering as a philosophy allows those using Quality Engineering as a framework to adopt the language and values set at the level above. Influencing the below level helps reinforce the Culture of Quality language, allowing people to see how more senior leaders support their work. It also allows each level to feed back up if the values, behaviours and language are helping or hindering and if any adjustment or clarity is needed.
Heads of department support discipline managers.
Quality Engineering as a framework then supports the level below by giving the people working in Quality Engineering as a tool the processes they need to build quality in. While those working in Quality Engineering as a tool work with the teams, they can provide feedback on whether the processes are working or need adjustment.
Discipline managers support team members.
One point I should make clear is that using the philosophy, framework and tool model does not mean that if you work in a team, you can only build quality via tools or that only Heads of Department can use Quality Engineering via a philosophy. You're just more likely to focus on these approaches than the others due to your sphere of influence.
For example, if you work in a team, you're only likely to have a small influence on your department's culture. Suppose you're the Head of the Department. In that case, you are unlikely to work directly on the products and services your teams create, limiting how much quality you can build into products.
As a team member, your peer groups are your team members and others in your job family. Therefore, you can influence the processes within your team, allowing you to leverage Quality Engineering as a framework. Within your job family peer group, you can influence the culture, allowing you to leverage Quality Engineering as a philosophy. But at both levels, you can bring your unique perspective of leveraging Quality Engineering as a tool, which allows others to learn from your successes and failures in building quality into products and services.
Sharing information vertically through disciplines and horizontally across peer groups allows for a learning culture to develop throughout a department. Leading to a more generative culture across an organisation where information flows more freely.
In summary
Working in teams means you have the most significant influence on building quality at the product level, allowing you to leverage Quality Engineering as a tool. Working as a Discipline Manager (or more general people manager), you'll have the greatest influence on the people you line manage, allowing you to leverage Quality Engineering as a framework. Working at the Head of Department or function level means you'll have the greatest influence on the culture of a department, allowing you to leverage Quality Engineering as a philosophy.
Building quality into each level allows the organisation to develop a Culture of Quality that looks at the people, processes, and products more holistically. That can begin to foster a healthy socio-technical system.
By examining your position and influence within your organisation, you can use this model as a framework for considering how to improve quality across all levels.
Flow diagram showing how quality is built in at different levels by different disciplines to influence how people think, behave, and act to create a culture of quality.
However, what I've described above is almost a perfect situation where you have all the roles in place, and they want to build a Culture of Quality. In subsequent posts, I'd like to look at what happens if you're missing some of the roles and dig into some of the pros and cons of this approach. But also, where are all the quality engineers?
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