Analysing the Quality Landscape

With a solid understanding of culture and stakeholder expectations, it is time to assess technical practices. Quality engineering is not only about testing; it encompasses how well the entire system supports the delivery of reliable, maintainable, and high-value software. This stage evaluates the effectiveness of current processes, tools, and technical debt to establish a measurable link between quality investments and business outcomes.

Auditing Processes and Tools

A strong quality strategy requires alignment between tools, workflows, and organisational risks. Conducting an audit of current engineering practices can reveal inefficiencies and areas for improvement. Key considerations include:

• Are testing efforts redundant or missing key risk areas?
• How robust and efficient are CI/CD pipelines, and do they provide reliable feedback loops?
• Do monitoring and observability tools enable teams to catch and respond to issues effectively?
• Are defect trends, release metrics, and customer feedback used to drive decision-making?

Mapping out these elements provides a clear picture of how well quality is embedded in day-to-day operations.

Assessing Technical Debt and Its Impact

Technical debt can be a silent killer of quality. While some level of debt is inevitable, excessive or unmanaged debt can make software fragile, increase maintenance costs, and slow down development. As I have mentioned before, I love how Stuart Crocker frames quality as the removal of unnecessary friction, it is a great lens from which to view technical debt. Key areas to evaluate include:

• Testability: Are there architectural or code-level constraints making it difficult to write effective tests?
• Reliability: Does accumulated debt lead to frequent regressions, outages, or unpredictable behaviour?
• Deployment Confidence: Are workarounds or excessive manual testing required before releasing software?

A technical debt register can help track and prioritise these issues. Presenting debt in terms of business impact, such as downtime affecting customers or increased engineering effort, can help gain leadership support for addressing it.

Strengthening Feedback Loops

Feedback loops are essential to maintaining quality at scale. The speed and effectiveness of these loops determine how quickly teams can identify, react to, and learn from quality signals. Questions to ask include:

• How quickly do teams get feedback on defects, performance issues, or security vulnerabilities?
• Are test results and production incidents regularly reviewed to inform improvements?
• Do development and operations teams share insights from monitoring and observability data?
• How well do feedback mechanisms drive meaningful change, rather than just surface-level fixes?

Improving these loops ensures that quality insights are not just collected but actively used to refine development practices.

Connecting Quality Investment to Business Value

One of the biggest challenges in quality engineering is articulating its value in business terms. Without a clear return on investment (ROI), quality efforts can struggle for prioritisation. A structured Quality ROI Model can help by linking quality improvements to measurable business outcomes, such as:

• Reduction in production defects leading to fewer support tickets and lower operational costs.
• Faster release cycles due to improved test automation and CI/CD efficiency.
• Increased customer retention as a result of higher reliability and fewer disruptions.
• Lower rework costs by identifying defects earlier in the development cycle.

The key is to frame quality improvements in terms of efficiency, cost savings, and customer satisfaction, making them tangible for executives and decision-makers.

Outputs of This Stage

By the end of this step, you should have:

• A Process and Tools Audit: A checklist or diagram mapping out existing tools, workflows, and gaps.
• A Technical Debt Register: A prioritised list of technical debt areas with estimated business impact.
• A Quality ROI Model: A structured approach to demonstrating how quality investments drive business value.

Why This Matters

Analysing the quality landscape helps organisations move beyond intuition and assumptions, providing concrete data to drive improvements. By understanding the strengths and weaknesses of current practices, organisations can make more informed, strategic decisions about where to invest in quality.

Next, we will look at how to develop a shared quality strategy that integrates technical, cultural, and organisational elements: Facilitate Discovery Sessions with Quality at the Core