When quality took off
Building digital products has shifted from heavy, slow projects to continuous development, where changes flow into production as a controlled stream. In this new rhythm, traditional quality assurance routines kept separate from development and rigid controls became bottlenecks. Simply adding more test automation wasn't enough to solve the problem if the operating models and mindset hadn't evolved to meet the needs of fast-moving teams.
The turning point came when quality was integrated into daily work and shared responsibility. This gave rise to Quality Engineering thinking, where quality is built into services from the development phase onwards. The combination of technology and research now produces real-time information to support decision-making, enabling risk management and effective prioritisation without having to sacrifice speed. Quality no longer just follows behind – it has learned to run at the pace of development.