The other night, my husband mumbled to pass him the “big pillow”. Half asleep, I reached for what I thought he meant - the long body pillow. “No, the big one”, he insisted. Confused, I handed him the only other pillow on the bed. A shorter but much fuller and thicker pillow. “This one?” I asked. “Ah, yes thank you,” he mumbled and quickly fell back asleep.
But I couldn’t fall back asleep. I kept thinking about we were both right and both wrong 🫠
(Of course, I was more right. But that’s not the point.)
The pillow he wanted wasn’t “big” in length. It was the smallest one on the bed. But it was the fattest, the most substantial. We used the same word to describe completely different dimensions.
This kind of miscommunication happens constantly in product development. When stakeholders say they want “quality,” what dimension are they actually talking about? Bug-free code? User experience polish? Ease of delivery? Reliability under load?
Everyone nods when you say “we need to improve quality”. But if you aren’t also taking about what you mean by “quality”, you‘re all just reaching for different pillows in the dark.
So the next time someone is talking to you about “quality”, maybe ask which kind of big they mean.