Heuristics
Make Implicit Quality Perspectives Explicit
How do we align teams who have different, unstated assumptions about what quality means?
Acknowledge that different functions perceive quality differently: product values ‘building the right thing’, engineering values ‘building the thing right’, and operations values ‘supporting the thing well’. Make these perspectives explicit through a formal discussion or a social contract. This prevents misalignment and fosters a holistic view of quality.
Example
We held a workshop with product, engineering, and support to create a social contract. This document explicitly defines our shared quality goals, balancing feature discovery with implementation correctness and operational stability.
Discussed in
