Blind Men Meet the Quality Elephant

For many organizations, software quality is an elephant found by blind men who think they can see. People hold different opinions about quality based on their work roles and interests. If we testers focus on one definition (our own), we will not communicate well with others in the organization, and our work ultimately will not meet their expectations. However, if we examine our customers' definition of excellence, we will find better ways to measure quality and set priorities. Read this discussion about differing viewpoints of quality and how to work with your customers and users to clearly see their quality elephant as well as your own and integrate their vision into your testing activities.