The phrase ‘great culture’ is often heard and highlighted on the websites and job descriptions of many QA companies. However, do we truly comprehend it enough to uphold or enhance it? This article will shed light on that topic.

What is the Culture of Happiness?

The culture of happiness can be compared to the foundation of a house. Without a robust foundation, there will be no stability to it, and it certainly will not last. The culture is the key element by which everything else is added, such as the kitchen, bathroom, bedrooms, study, and garden, among others.

Culture takes place whether we want it to or not. It is the nucleus of a software testing consultancy company and is created, to a large extent, by the founders and all employees, not just by their words but also by their actions.

Strategy is crucial in business, but without the right culture, any strategy is bound to fail.

Culture is determined by the beliefs, attitudes, and practices that people encounter when they interact with your business.

Culture, or the lack of it, is infinitely more critical and could destroy your strategy before it even takes off.

Why Does Culture Matter?

Think about your past roles that you enjoyed the most; I am sure that the reason was because of an amazing culture. The opposite applies to roles that you did not enjoy.

There is evidence that good cultures create a feedback loop that often corrects bad strategy, and also that good strategy gets consumed by bad culture.

From my experience, a better culture helps to increase the chance of a great delivery output. In a happy environment, there will be learning, and all the software testing teams will be moving in the same direction.

I have witnessed this in action, and for me, it was due to the team being synchronized and working towards a common goal. If a team works together, there is a greater chance of achieving our objectives.

What Impact Does a Bad Culture Have?

A bad culture generally creates fear in the QA team, which makes them scared to innovate and results in more mistakes. The other major impact is that people will not want to work within the company in the future, or they will not want to come back.

People do not leave the company; they leave the culture.

QA culture also affects revenue; the best-performing software testing teams are usually those performing the best long term. In my opinion, squads with a bad culture that are still successful will only maintain high performance in the short term or may not actually be meeting their maximum output.

What Should Your Company’s QA Culture Include?

Remember that culture is more than just creating a great place to work and some words in your mission statement.

The culture should determine what is encouraged, discouraged, and acceptable.

It includes:

• Adaptiveness to change – in business, we need to be flexible to adapt quickly.
• Innovation – making great new software products to stay ahead of the competition.
• Risk tolerance – how much risk are we willing to take?
• Decision-making – being bold in making decisions, even when they may fail.
• Efficiency – ensuring that we are efficient in our output.
• Customer focus – how is our culture driving what a customer wants?