Decentralizing quality

Everyone agrees quality matters, but we can’t agree on what it is — or who gets to decide. I’ve experienced the drive for quality in every design leadership role I’ve had. When it comes to software, we like to pretend that quality is a number. Dashboards stand in for judgment, A/B tests stand in for taste, and leaders try to will excellence into existence with reviews and mandates. But in today’s software market, confusing a KPI with quality isn’t just naïve; it’s fatal. Consumers’ attention spans are short