How do you advocate for quality beyond developers?
24 Feb 2026
A woman and a man on a video call.
In this moment:
Simon Tomes
Louise Woodhams
Louise would love to hear from fellow quality leaders.
What struggles do you face when advocating for quality beyond developers?
What have you tried that's helped?
How do you convince product and project people that testing and quality is not optional?
Please share a comment.
What struggles do you face when advocating for quality beyond developers?
What have you tried that's helped?
How do you convince product and project people that testing and quality is not optional?
Please share a comment.
Simon Tomes
Community Lead at MoTaverse
he/him
Hello, I'm Simon. Since 2003 I've had various roles in testing, tech leadership and coaching. I believe in the power of collaboration, creativity and community. 🎓 MoT-STEC qualified. I get real joy working with and supporting our wonderful MoTaverse community.
“Thanks for making me feel so confident about myself.” | “I'm so grateful for all you do in the MoTaverse community, I learn so much as a result!” | “A simple chat with Simon in person absolutely changed everything.” | “Simon is one of the best people that I've ever met to have conversations with. He's so grounded in his way of thinking and articulates his thoughts so well and his feelings and his knowledge about community and everything.”
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Ujjwal Kumar Singh
The struggle of breaking the stereotype that testing brings quality is one of the biggest challenges I have faced.
Another challenge for me is convincing the team in priortizing test execution over test cases. Documentation are good but minimum documentation can help in saving time for better test strategy, test design, etc.
Gary Hawkes
I've established the principle to "politely" not wait to be invited by product and project people and start influencing them as soon as I can. For example, with product people I track when they create stories. I can either wait for the refinement sessions or I can as the leader review their stories searching for the "why", ambiguities, untestable AC's etc. I'm happy to brainstorm any ideas with you if it helps 😁
Melissa Fisher
Hiya! What a great topic of conversation. An idea I would put forward is to talk about business risk - I've found if you frame the problem in the right way then it can help advocate for whatever you're after - that might be more time, exploring a quality criteria or something else entirely.
Also good things to do are communities of practice, knowledge share sessions and more to spread the good word of what's going on. ALso fun things like "quality newsletter" to share what's been going on.
Melissa Fisher
(totally get your comment, louise, of being spread too thin at times with being a lead. I've found being pragmatic and choosing the items to focus on works well. Not looking for perfection but progress day by day on the right things)
Rahul Parwal
Here is a good reference article from the MoTaverse:
https://www.ministryoftesting.com/articles/the-quality-and-testing-information-model
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