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Barry Ehigiator
Barry Ehigiator
Test Team Lead
A seasoned professional in software testing and quality engineering, who is passionate about empowering individuals and teams to deliver quality software products to their clients.
🎂 MoTaBirthday | February 7, 2021
On Wednesday, the 30th of September, people will come together in Brighton for a day of honest conversations about what it means to lead with quality right now. The event is sold out, but you can j...
29 Jun
There's a cool lesson in the Software Quality Engineering Certificate (SQEC) which I look forward to folks checking out. It's in Module 9, Lesson 2 which has the brilliant Barry Ehigiator sharing h...
8 Apr
In module 9 of the Software Quality Engineering Certificate, Barry Ehigiator writes about potential pitfalls in QE. Amongst others, he mentions:
Poor implementation that leads to a lack of c...
27 Mar
I'm reviewing Barry Ehigiator's SQEC Module 9 Lesson 2: How does Quality Engineering impact the team?He shares the following:
Quality leaders and practitioners who embrace the broader view of QE di...
25 Mar
A look at the structure and responsibilities of a whole-team quality approach
19 Jan
A look at the structure of embedded quality engineering teams
15 Jan
Lead change from any role by applying transformational leadership principles to inspire others, improve quality, and drive meaningful collaboration
20 Oct
An amazing panel full of brilliant insights
5 Dec
Strategic Quality Leadership
Strategic quality leadership is the ability to influence, shape, and elevate both the technical and cultural dimensions of software delivery so that quality becomes a shared, systemic, and continuously improving capability.
It is characterised by:
A long‑term, system‑level perspectiveImproving processes, reducing waste, designing for quality - not just testing for it.
A focus on cultural enablersCollaboration, psychological safety, shared ownership, transparency.
The ability to align strategy, delivery, and behaviourConnecting quality goals to organisational outcomes and customer value.
Technical credibility and coaching influenceAdvancing automation, testability, observability, and engineering excellence.
Commitment to continuous improvementEmbedding root cause analysis, learning and improvement loops into the system.
Strategic quality leadership in practice:Strategic Quality Leadership is demonstrated when a Quality Leader elevates both the technical and cultural capabilities of a team to improve software quality and delivery outcomes. In practice, this means moving beyond testing tasks to shape system‑level behaviours, influence decision‑making, and create sustainable quality improvements. In nutshell, strategic quality leadership turns quality from an activity into a team or organisational capability, and from a phase in the product development process into a shared mindset that drives better delivery and customer outcomes.
Quality police
A quality police dynamic can occur when teams become divided, and Quality Engineers are positioned, explicitly or implicitly, as the people who “approve” work. In this situation, they can become de facto gatekeepers rather than collaborators, which may create an “us vs them” dynamic in teams, lead to defensive behaviour around incidents and bugs, and reduce psychological safety.
Impact
Developers and engineers may disengage from quality ownership.
Quality Engineers may be blamed for missed issues.
Collaboration may decrease rather than increase.
Root cause This may happen when shared ownership is talked about in teams, but accountability is not truly shared. It can be noticeable in teams where authority remains centralised while responsibility is supposedly distributed.
Shift-left testing
Shift-left is a concept in software development that is commonly understood as an approach that encourages software development teams to engage testers, and introduce quality focused activities, such as testing much earlier in the SDLC.Quality focused activities in the context of “shift-left” can include, for example - testing features and product ideas in the planning phase, analysing requirements and specifications before a single line of code is written, engaging earlier with developers and other stakeholders to clarify requirements, goals and expectations of a feature or product under development etc.
Quality Engineer
Your mission [as a quality engineer] is to help your team build better software by making quality visible, valued, and shared.
Comments
(3)
Suddenly, a wild tester appeared! A developer’s guide to caring for software testers
Very insightful and relatable article💡
I couldn’t agree more on your point about the importance of communication, teamwork, and consideration of/ for everyone in a team.
Very well done Olly 👏
What happened to your influence and impact after transitioning to a new role?
Thank you for sharing this amazing memory Simon 😎, Very well captured 👏
I think, therefore I test: the importance of thinking for testers
Thank you Andy for the great article. It’s really nice to see more being written about this as it is a topic I’ve been passionate about for a long time.
In my ebook “Put Your Mindset to The Test” from 2021, I defined the testing mindset as:
“The set of beliefs that pushes you to look for trouble, problems, and risks in your product, so that you can help uncover them, and possibly help prevent the failures they could result to in the hands of your customers”
I might now need to revisit that 😁
28 Oct 25
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