At Agile Testing Days 2022, Gwen Diagram keynoted on Happiness is Quality. I have been a long admirer of Gwen’s work since we first spoke years ago. She is an excellent engineer, knows the peculiarities of tech as well as the importance of culture, and she is currently Head of Engineering.
Gwen spoke about the importance of Happiness and Eudaimonia, and how to build a Quality Product as well as how to foster the environment that is required for building Quality Software. She defines Eudaimonia as finding purpose and meaning in life, and throughout her keynote highlighted the core principles required for eudaimonia in engineering culture.
Gwen observed that the great engineering teams run on Quality, Observability and Communication (which non-coincidentally: testers are often great at). She loves metrics and measuring: it is how she guides what she is going to change and what she’ll leave in place. Throughout her keynote she suggested multiple things to measure, from technical engineering aspects to people’s happiness and learnings in the team. She stressed the importance of building relationships outside of engineering to set yourself up for success and highlighted the communication gap that often exists between engineering and management, with suggestions how to bridge the gap by offering transparency, clear processes and transparency.
Thanks Gwen for a wonderful keynote!
