Imagine a world where product quality is integrated into every function in your organization. Developers, quality engineers, product managers, leaders at all levels, sales, services, and support work together and focus on a shared vision. That vision consists of delivering quality value to customers and enabling a fast flow of planned work into production. I know that may be a bit of a stretch of the imagination for most organizations, but the path and guidance on how to get there over time is what we will be focusing on here.

Every time we ask our customers about our product quality, they focus on their total experience in dealing with our product and teams. Their quality perception starts from the moment they search for a solution online and keeps going as they deal with our sales team, internal product team, and support organization throughout the usage of the solution. In other words, they value their entire user journey with their vendor.

Many organizations have adopted Agile as a practice to deliver high-quality product releases with high value to the market faster. While it is crucial to focus on the mechanics of Agile disciplines internally, it is also important to define what quality is, how customers view quality, and how it actually impacts customer satisfaction and loyalty in such a way that it brings additional business opportunities and enhances revenue. Many teams have historically focused on product releases that are rich in new features while giving little attention to improving the customer experience on existing features. Lack of focus on continuous improvement along with not engaging end users to gather feedback have created friction and in many cases have cost companies revenue due to losing customer loyalty.

In today’s digital world, there is no shortage of data. Collecting relevant data, analyzing it, and using telemetry can play a big role in the quality journey when delivering relevant solutions to customers and improving upon them at all times. With telemetry we can pivot and redirect our focus to adapt our ways of doing business to deliver the best value to our customers. Yet, telemetry is not fully adopted in most companies with legacy code and features.