The Mindset

If you are reading this posting in this particular blog, you are probably concerned about the quality of the software products you (and your organization) create. If you are a manager (at any level), this posting is especially for you. Why is that? Because you are in the best position to do something about it….

Let’s go back to the start: you are concerned about the quality of your products. Traditionally, the effort of improving quality has been focused on improving these products and the process of creating them. Surely, this makes sense. It is the most direct approach to deal with the challenge you are facing. However, this does not necessarily mean that this is the most effective approach (and certainly not the only one).

There is one thing better than investing solely in the quality of the products your organization creates: investing in the people who create them. These people are your best assets – your human assets.

What does it mean to invest in your human assets? It means you should provide them the facilities to improve their skills and grow to be professionals. It means you should nurture them and help them thrive in their profession.

Improving the skills of the people who work with you has two major benefits. First, the more skilled, knowledgeable, and experienced your workers are, the better the products they create become. This means that indirectly you are addressing your original concern: improving your products. Gathering good requirements, managing projects successfully, creating quality designs, writing quality code, and thinking of effective tests are all driven by skills, awareness, knowledge, and experience. Investing in people means helping them build up their experience and expand their knowledge in a guided manner.

But that’s not all. The second benefit is that your human assets will have greater value to you and to the organization. They can do more things, they will come up with new ideas, they will be more open-minded, and above all, they will be more loyal to the organization who invested in them.

Unlike your products and the technologies or processes you use, your human assets cannot be cloned by your competitors. Investing in them is translated directly into a real competitive edge. Doing it correctly is not always trivial, but it isn’t that hard either. All you have to do is to realize it is a sure investment you can only benefit from.

Want to know more about how investing in people promotes quality? Read about the Lucid Quality approach.