Tina Fletcher

When I started my career twenty years ago, software quality basically meant "no bugs," and testing meant executing a finite set of cases. Since then, I’ve watched the concept evolve alongside significant shifts in technology and industry practices.

Because these changes have been largely additive, we face an ever-expanding horizon of what "good" software looks like.
In this talk, I offer a definition of modern software quality that incorporates the many expectations accumulated from technological and process trends such as Agile, automated testing, cloud hosting, DevOps, and AI. Drawing on my own painful experiences with neglecting or misunderstanding the evolving dimensions of quality, I’ll share examples of what effective practices can look like.

To help you assess how you and your team are doing with respect to this laundry list of things to be responsible for, we will break them down into four key pillars:

• User Value: Building the Right Thing (strategic alignment, risk assessment, measurable impact)
• Product Health: Testing the Things We Can Predict (enabling and executing solid testing strategies)
• Operational Health: Dealing with the Unexpected (observability, recovery, non-derministic behaviour)
• Sustainability: Holistic Stewardship (security, cost, performance, accessibility, maintainability)

We’ll cover a series of questions to help you explore and audit each area, followed by a set of prompts to help you determine where the next quality evolution is likely to come from in your context.

While the field may have been simpler when I began, the constant transformation is what has kept it exciting. Fortunately, today it’s easier than ever to learn a new skill that can bring more value to your users and your business. As a final thought, I hope to leave you with the realization that the most important software quality strategy is the willingness to adapt, evolve, and stay curious in an ever-changing landscape.