Quality is everyone's responsibility.

 

Generally, it’s observed that the Software Testers are the ones who held solely responsible for the Software Quality. However, this mindset needs to be changed as everyone (Product Owner, Scrum Master, Developer, Tester, and other stakeholders including Business Team, Change Control Team, Security Team, & Architecture Team) can contribute to Software Quality in several ways.

Product Owner –

  

By doing below tasks religiously Product Owner can contribute to Software Quality.

• By having a clear understanding of the User requirements (this is highly important as this drives the whole Software Development and Testing Life cycles).
• By prioritizing the Product Backlog items (with an appropriate thought process).
• By providing the detailed and clear requirements/user stories (again; this is very important as requirements are the baseline for Developer and Tester to understand the System).
• By making sure that requirements are not confusing and they are conveying the correct messages.
• By clarifying all the doubts appropriately in a timely manner and keeping everyone in the team on the same page.
• By executing some critical business workflows in the Test environment and providing the inputs to the Development Team (Developers and Testers).

Software Developer –

 

By doing below tasks religiously Software Developer can contribute to Software Quality.

• By making sure that they have a clear picture of the System and all their doubts are addressed by the Product Owner.
• By making sure that all the technical challenges are discussed and solutions are in place.
• By doing the impact analysis appropriately; especially in the Maintenance projects.
• By following the coding standards and guidelines, performing code reviews.
• By focusing on Unit Testing and at some extent Integration Testing.
• By executing some business workflows in the Test environment (which will be certainly helpful to gain the confidence in the system as well as increasing the Product knowledge).

 
Scrum Master – 

 

Besides the regular responsibilities (i.e. being a servant Leader, Facilitator, & Coach for the Scrum Team); by doing below tasks religiously Scrum Master can contribute to Software Quality.

• By making sure that each individual in the team is following the Processes (as if there is Quality in the Process then it is easier to enforce a Quality in the Product).
• By executing some business workflows in the Test environment (which will be certainly helpful to become comfortable with the system workflows and to address any impediments that Scrum Team has).

Software Tester –

Of course; Software Tester plays a vital role in Software Quality. However; regardless of the methodologies (Agile/Waterfall) if the other stakeholders (as mentioned above) are also contributing to the Software Quality then Software Testers effort becomes more meaningful and they indeed value add to the Software. Remember; Software Testing is a journey to achieve the Quality.