Avoiding Obstacles to Upstream Quality

A number of the issues with upstream quality are similar to issues with quality in general. Your organization, metrics, valuations, and rewards may have formed a culture where quality is not a high priority and the wrong tradeoffs occur.

Many issues with quality involve incentives that on the surface seem fine but indirectly reward not taking steps to improve quality. As in medicine, the rule is first do no harm—eliminating negative incentives works wonders. The obstacles described in this section are addressed in the section titled “A Model of Future Product Development” later in this chapter.

Testing Does Not Create Quality

Quality is not a result of testing. Testing can only indicate an absence of quality, ...

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