Hello everyone! Here are some notes on quality I learned years back and thought I would share with you.

Let’s talk about Service Quality

In our business there are a few main ideas we have about quality. The first is that quality should be defined by the customers. The second is that to build sustainable products for the long haul, we need to build quality into our practices as well as our products. Agile practices, quality engineering practices, and customer acceptance are all ideas we talk about when talking quality.

All good so far, right? But there is more to quality than this.

When dealing with humans, quality can get hard to know and understand. How often have you come across a customer who can’t really articulate quality, but knows it when they see it. (Or know it when they don’t see it?) How often has someone clearly said what they want, you’ve delivered it, and still they are unsatisfied?

Service Quality

In the 1980s and 1990s a lot of research was done into quality and how to know it. One of the lessons that we can draw from this work is that there are common patterns to how people assess quality. People may not be conscious of it, but they are generally assessing things along a series of categories.

The framework I want to share with you today is about service quality. We’re in the business of providing a service to our customers. Also Software is a lot more intangible than physical things and so thinking about software development in terms of both product and service is probably useful.

RATER framework

The framework I want to share with you today was once called “ServQual” as the research was around service quality, but eventually in the 2000’s it was re-badged as RATER after the mnemonic it inspired.

This model identifies five dimensions of quality and then defines quality in relationship between an expectation versus an experience on each of these dimensions. The five dimensions in RATER are listed below.

• Reliability
• Assurance
• Tangibles
• Empathy, and
• Responsiveness

Assessing performance

What people do is think consciously and subconsciously across these dimensions and then assess their experience against their expectation.

What I expect <=====> What I experience

If a person’s expectation is exceeded they will generally be delighted if they highly value that dimension of quality. If a person’s experience is of a lower quality that what they expected they will feel disappointed and frustrated.

Note that there are multiple aspects to the assessment;

• Assessment across each of the five categories
• A weighting of each dimension — different things matter to different people
• Expectation versus experience — and the resulting gap

RATER definitions and examples

Reliability

• Do you do what you say you will?
• Do you turn up on time?
• Are you where you are expected to be?
• Do you meet behavioural expectations?
• Does a trend in behaviour or performance continue?
• Do agreements, instructions and guidelines get followed?

“You don't build a reputation on what you're going to do.” - Henry Ford

Assurance

• Do you have the right knowledge and skills to deliver the service you promised?
• Do you show respect for your customers?
• Do you inspire trust and confidence?

Assurance is about inspiring trust and confidence in your clients and customers. It is all about making people comfortable with you and your work. You can do this through demonstrating knowledge and courtesy in your interactions with your client, the project team and stakeholders and your suppliers.

You can also do this through delivery of great quality work. Taking some time on a weekly basis to show the work you have completed and talk about how it is progressing against goals and standards is a useful activity that builds confidence on this front. Daily summaries of work are also useful.

Tangibles

In our world “Working software” is a good tangible thing to show. Putting working product in the hands of customers is hugely valuable. Small increments of business value trump partially completed jobs.

Prototypes and designs are also valuable. When we are brainstorming and designing early photos of diagrams, lists and models are valuable.

Empathy

Technical ability is table-stakes. What sets us apart is the way we deal with our clients. Empathy comes from listening and understanding and showing people that we get what they care about. Empathy is being able to put yourself in the customer’s shoes.

Empathy requires that you listen to the people around you. It also requires that you listen to yourself — your own instincts and hunches. We need to build space in our day to reflect on what has been going on around us and to work out what the real priorities are and what needs to be done about them.

Retrospectives are something we should be doing weekly or fortnightly, but we should be reflecting daily to make the biggest impact here.

“Better leaders and better managers are, above all, better listeners -- to others but also to themselves.”

Responsiveness

I’ll take about responsiveness in two parts; don’t leave people waiting, and be visibly taking on the feedback you receive.

Responsiveness often feels like we should be fast. That is actually important, but more important than fast is helping people deal with uncertainty. If you get a message, but can’t answer a question right now, you can acknowledge that you have seen it and perhaps let them know when you will have time to address it. That gives the other person the ability to know what comes next and frees them up to focus and think on other topics.

Responsiveness also means taking the feedback you get from engaging with it. Don’t just hear feedback and park it. Listen and absorb it into your ideas, then move forward with a broader perspective on what needs to be done. Responsiveness shows other people you have considered their contribution and that it is part of the new broader perspectives that support the current plans and thinking.

Wrap up

I hope this post has been useful for you. Please think about these ideas and perhaps have a conversation with your team mates about how you are doing today. What areas can you improve upon and what areas matter most to your customers and clients.

If you would like to explore this more, you are more than welcome to get in touch with me. I can chat one on one with you or perhaps lead a group conversation on the topic.

If you would like to grab a more detailed checklist of things to inspect on this topic take a look at this blog post I wrote a while back.

Thanks for reading!

Craig