Did you know that, on average, we use six metaphors a minute? Surprised? Me too! They are so embedded into our speech that mostly we are unconscious about them. Research suggests that metaphors change the way we think of a concept on an unconscious level.

In 2011 a study was conducted in which two groups of readers have been presented with two articles describing the same crime. In the first article, the crime was compared to a beast, and in another to a disease. When asked to solve the crime issue, readers of the first article suggested control strategies while the second group came up with diagnostic or treatment strategies. Hence, changing the metaphor changes the way we think.

What is happening to product quality?

Throughout my career as a quality engineer, I have developed a deep passion for quality. This passion goes way beyond the quality of software products. It is also about the quality of all interactions, quality of processes, and quality of work and life experience. I strive to bring excellence to every aspect of my life, and it hurts to see when greatness is lacking.

In my working life, I’ve seen the market focus shift more and more from quality to speed. We build more products than ever before; unfortunately, many of them are not up to par.

How IT organizations have tried to fix the degradation of quality until now confuses me sometimes.

There are several recurring wishes our clients bring to us, one of which is speed, to improve time to market. However, there is no dial that we can turn to deliver value faster. Software teams are not like cars; there’s no accelerator pedal. Even if we try to speed up by adding more resources, in many cases, the actual bottleneck will just become more apparent.

In our search for increased delivery of value, we hunt for these bottlenecks. No two contexts are the same, and for this story, we have a particular context in mind. Symptoms in different organizations are often similar, and our story might apply to your setting if you recognize the problems we encountered.

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