Leading Quality

How Great Leaders Deliver High-Quality Software and Accelerate Growth

Ronald Cummings-John, Owais Peer

• Publisher: ROI Press
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781916185807
• eBook ISBN: 9781916185814
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Project Management
• Index: Computer Science

What is the true meaning of quality? How can you influence positive attitudes towards quality within the workplace? Leading Quality teaches you how to influence and align your company's definition of quality, so that you can deliver the best possible experience to your clients. You will learn the techniques successful leaders use to make their strategic decisions and you will be given the tools to ensure that your team is in alignment to achieving common goals. Leading Quality is the first book that teaches why quality is important and how to incorporate it within the workspace. Praise for Leading Quality: "A quality mindset remains key to differentiating your product and your company. Leading Quality offers key lessons to develop this mindset." - Michael Lopp, author of Managing Humans and VP of Product Engineering at Slack "Leading Quality communicates just how important a focus on quality is within your company and is one of the few titles that actually teaches how to lead quality in a clear yet captivating manner." - Shesh Patel, Engineering Manager at The New York Times "Three elements define any successful product: quality, quality, and quality. Leading Quality is a comprehensive and practical guide to embedding quality into the DNA of any product organization." - Nick Caldwell, CPO at Looker and former VP of Engineering at Reddit

Praise for Leading Quality

“A quality mindset remains key to differentiating your product and your company. Leading Quality offers key lessons to develop this mindset.”

Michael Lopp, author of Managing Humans and VP of Product Engineering at Slack

“Three elements define any successful product: quality, quality, and quality. Leading Quality is a comprehensive and practical guide to embedding quality into the DNA of any product organization.”

Nick Caldwell, CPO at Looker and former VP of Engineering at Reddit

“Every crisis of quality begins as a crisis of leadership. Leading Quality will help you avoid both kinds of trouble.”

James Bach, author of Lessons Learned in Software Testing

“Leading Quality provides a fascinating insight to help guide leaders in their journey to implement effective QA strategies, particularly when delivering high-quality products in IT.”

Ilya Sakharov, Director of QA at HelloFresh

“Leading Quality is a must-read for all manager who are serious about quality within their organizations. From automation to best practices and insights, this book covers it all.”

Maryann Lockley, Head of QA at Camelot Group - The National Lottery

“Finally! A book to help managers and executives understand why they should care about quality and why a big investment in quality pays off in the form of a successful product. Insights and stories from leading quality practitioners illustrate why and how companies need to focus on quality.”

Lisa Crispin, author of Agile Testing and More Agile Testing

“If you are a manager contemplating automated or continuous testing, there are valuable insights within these pages.”

Robert Martin, author of The Clean Coder

“Most books in this space just focus on the details of testing, this is the first book that tells you how to LEAD quality.”

Daniel Knott, author of Hands-On Mobile App Testing

“Leading Quality stands out as one of the few titles that actually talks about how to lead quality from a manager’s perspective. A great read for those who want to take their team to the next level.”

Stephen Janaway, VP Engineering at Bloom & Wild

“While testers already have an intuitive and instinctive grasp of why quality is important for their organizations, many of them have a hard time explaining this concept in a way that inspires attention, motivation, or action in their C-Level colleagues. This is where Leading Quality comes in. It’s full of interesting examples and useful ways to articulate why quality is important and how it can help your company.”

Vernon Richards, Managing Director at House of Test (UK), conference host & speaker

“Quality software will never happen from testing alone. The highest-quality software comes from teams and organizations that have a culture of quality and achieving a culture of quality requires strong quality leadership. This excellent book from Ron and Owais interweaves stories about quality and leadership with pragmatic advice and research that anyone can use to lead quality in their own organizations.”

Alan Page, Quality Director at Unity Technologies and cohost of the AB Testing podcast

“For too long, there has been a disconnect between testers and C-level leaders in terms of how testing and quality are viewed. This book is a MUST-READ for anyone in a management or leadership position. Leading Quality is also a useful resource for testers as it gives different perspectives on quality and will equip you with the language to be able to speak to the managers and leaders in your organization to positively influence change. This book is only the beginning of a big movement toward quality leadership within the industry.”

Dan Ashby, Head of Quality Engineering at Photobox and former Head of Testing at eBay

“Leading Quality will help QA professionals advocate for investing in quality at any stage of a company’s growth by illustrating why quality matters through frameworks and insights from some of the leading practitioners in tech.”

Suyash Sonwalkar, Quality and Automation Lead at Coinbase

DOWNLOAD THE AUDIOBOOK FREE!*

You can now become an industry leader in quality no matter how busy you are, with the official Leading Quality audiobook!

Enjoy bonus insights, chapter commentary, and much more as coauthor Ronald Cummings-John takes you through the book, giving you the full Leading Quality experience.

Download now:

lqbook.co/audio

* The free version of the audio book is sponsored by Global App Testing www.globalapptesting.com

Leading Quality: How Great Leaders Deliver High-Quality Software and Accelerate Growth

Copyright © 2019 by Ronald Cummings John and Owais Peer

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without the written permission of the publisher.

Version 1.01

Published in Great Britain by ROI Press

ISBN 978-1-9161858-0-7 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-9161858-0-7 (Hardback)

ISBN 978-1-9161858-1-4 (ePub)

ISBN 978-1-9161858-4-5 (Kindle)

ISBN 978-1-9161858-3-8 (Audio)

Cover Design: Jason Anscomb

Foreword

By Neil Brown, Testing Services Partner at Deloitte Consulting

Years ago, testing was an overhead expense.

Today, it’s the centerpiece of business strategy.

In financial services, for instance, it used to be that if your bank or insurance company’s software wasn’t delivering at the level you expected, you had the option to switch providers. However, switching entailed weeks or even months of effort and paperwork. When comparing the annoyance of an inconvenient application against the challenge of transitioning to a competitor, few felt it was worth the work. One tech titan in particular was infamous for limiting their amount of testing and releasing software with known issues because, despite them, the company...

Table of contents

• Foreword