I've worked with 8 companies in 2 years to help them understand their quality culture.

How? Well, I like the framework devised by Alan Page of Modern Testing fame, sprinkled with some coach-like open questions. It gives me a nice structure on which to hang my other tools and ideas. The structure also makes it easy to explore the situation without it feeling like an interrogation! Always useful!

Here is the framework with some open questions you can use to get things started!

Quality Culture Framework + Opening Questions

Dimension #1: Testing Breadth - How widely are you looking for bugs?

Dimension #2: Quality & Test Ownership - Who is responsible for bugs found in production?

Dimension #3: Technical Debt & Maintenance - When & how is tech debt created & how is it paid down?

Dimension #4: Code Quality & Tools - How hygienic is your code?

Dimension #5: Customer Data Analysis (Analytics) - Which features are loved or hated by your customers, and how does that impact product development?

Dimension #6: Customer Success - What happens when a customer reports a problem, asks for help or needs an enhancement?

Dimension #7: Development Approach - How are new features built and existing ones maintained?

Dimension #8: Learning & Improvement - When does the team reflect on their work and learn new skills?

Dimension #9: Quality Culture Leadership Support - How much agency does the team have, and how easy can they make decisions to support the growth of the business?

Then What?!

Once folks understand where they're at, they can figure out what they want to tackle.

But that's a topic for another post :)