Who is accountable for Quality in a Scrum Team?

Many people out there still wonder about who is accountable for building quality products within a Scrum Team. The Scrum Guide clearly places this responsibility of enhancing the product's value on the developer’s shoulders. While this idea makes sense on the surface, it's important to note that Developers are talented individuals who focus on completing assigned tasks. So, if it's not the Developers, then who is responsible for defining what constitutes "done" and ensuring the quality within a Scrum Team?

In this article, we aim to provide clarity by revealing who holds the reins of quality within a Scrum Team. It will shed light on various aspects, ultimately helping us determine who bears the responsibility for ensuring high-quality results. 

What does Quality Mean in Scrum?

As previously discussed, within Scrum, two facets of quality can be defined:

• Intrinsic Quality: This category encompasses all the inherent qualities possessed by a product. It encompasses attributes such as suitability, durability, reliability, uniformity, and maintainability. Intrinsic quality can be quantitatively measured through metrics like test coverage, the number of defects escaped, or bugs per line of code, among others.
• Extrinsic Quality: Extrinsic quality represents how the customer perceives the quality of the product and the value it offers to them. Assessing extrinsic quality relies more on qualitative measurements, which may involve factors like sales figures, product usage, and customer feedback.

When most discussions center on quality, they typically refer to intrinsic quality. This is why many companies maintain a team of Quality Assurance (QA) specialists. These professionals don't gauge the customer's perception of the product; instead, their role is to carry out verification and validation. These two testing phases aim to answer crucial questions:

• Are we building the product correctly?
• Are we building the right product?

The objective of verification and validation is to ensure that the product aligns with the gathered business and technical requirements. To ascertain if you can answer these questions effectively during verification and validation, it's essential to delve into the various testing stages in software development.

In Agile product development, companies create products with a clear tie to a customer-oriented vision and value proposition. If the technical and business requirements fail to align with this vision, their reliability becomes irrelevant because they don't provide value. The primary aim of all iterations and Releases is to deliver high-value features while balancing the associated development costs. Ultimately, this aligns with the core objective of every Scrum Sprint.

Measuring the Productivity and Quality of a Scrum Team

Let's explore how we can gauge the work accomplished by a Scrum Team in delivering value to customers.

Achieving Sprint Goals

Sprint Goals provide the answer to the question, 'What should we do next?' These goals could range from addressing potential threats to delivering user-centric features. Keeping track of Sprint Goals and consistently meeting them defines how effectively the Scrum Team aligns with business objectives.

Escaped Defects

These defects represent the number of issues and roadblocks the team encounters during software development. Ideally, thorough testing should minimize the occurrence of escaped defects, but they may still occur. Surprisingly, having some escaped defects can be a positive sign, indicating that the team has engaged with most of the stories.

Team Velocity

Team velocity quantifies the average number of User Stories completed by the Scrum Team in previous sprints. This figure aids in estimating the team's capacity to tackle upcoming sprints effectively.

Scrum Metrics – Assessing a Scrum Team's Quality: These metrics enable us to assess the level of quality contributed by a Scrum Team to meet customer needs.

Return on Investment (ROI)

The Scrum approach ensures a swift Return on Investment (ROI) compared to other models. This is because software is continuously delivered to customers in a functional state, with ongoing updates enhancing the user experience. A successful Scrum project yielding a good ROI signifies the digital product's popularity among users.

Capital Redeployment

When investors are willing to reinvest capital in the same Scrum Team or project, it signifies that the team has demonstrated its ability to enhance the product's quality.

Number of Satisfied Customers

Various methods can gauge customer satisfaction levels, with the Net Promoter Score (NPS) being a prominent tool. NPS measures user recommendations for a specific software product. More positive reviews indicate that the Scrum Team has successfully included high-quality features into the product.

Practical Ownership of Quality within a Scrum Team

When it comes to the practical ownership of quality within a Scrum Team, the responsibility is shared across the entire team. However, the Product Owner plays a pivotal role in ensuring that the team adheres to the best development practices. In essence, the Product Owner can be considered the primary custodian of quality within a Scrum Team. Here's why:

• Approval of Design: The Product Owner is responsible for endorsing the product design, ensuring that they align with the customer’s objectives, product vision and quality standards.
• Confirmation of Pre-Development Testing Scope: It falls upon the Product Owner to confirm the scope of pre-development testing, which sets the foundation for a robust quality assurance process.
• Approval of Non-Functional and Performance Requirements: Non-functional and performance requirements are crucial aspects of quality. The Product Owner's approval in this regard ensures that these requirements are met effectively.
• Receipt of Business Reports from Quality Assurance Specialist: The Product Owner receives business reports from the Quality Assurance Specialist, offering insights into the product's quality. This information guides decisions related to further improvements.
• Resolution of Defects: The Product Owner also plays a role in validating the defects promptly, ensuring that they are resolved before they find their way into consumer’s usage, thus maintaining a high standard of quality.

Quality is by everyone in the Scrum Team

The Product Owner is accountable for extrinsic quality standards. The Product Developers, as we discussed earlier in this blog, are accountable to improve the intrinsic quality.

The Scrum Master may introduce the right set of technical practices that can improve the overall product quality. They can even coach the Product Owner and Developers to follow the right set of practices that can bring in both Intrinsic and Extrinsic Quality.

Conclusion

In a Scrum Team, every role contributes to enhancing a product's value. Every team member has a role to play in delivering a high Quality product in their own way, thus improving overall customer satisfaction and business value.

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