Practice Notes from Quality & Delivery Transformations

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  • Practice Note: Assessing Capabilities, Not Processes

    One of the assumptions I have gradually become less convinced of is that organizations should be assessed primarily through their processes. This assumption is deeply embedded in many maturity models. Whether we look at software testing, quality assurance, data management, or other organizational disciplines, the assessment often revolves around questions such as:

    • Are processes documented?
    • Are they followed consistently?
    • Are they measured?
    • Are they continuously improved?

    The underlying logic is straightforward: Better processes lead to better outcomes.

    For a long time, I accepted this logic without much reflection. After all, processes are visible, assessable, and relatively easy to compare across organizations.

    Yet experience has repeatedly shown something different. Some organizations score highly against process-oriented models while struggling to deliver meaningful results. At the same time, other organizations operate with surprisingly lightweight processes and consistently outperform their peers.

    This raises an uncomfortable question:

    What exactly are we assessing?

    From Processes to Capabilities

    Over time, I have found it more useful to think in terms of capabilities rather than processes. A capability describes what an organization is able to do.

    Examples include:

    • Managing quality risks
    • Designing effective test strategies
    • Detecting data quality issues
    • Learning from production incidents
    • Making informed release decisions

    These capabilities exist independently of any particular process.

    Organizations can realize the same capability in very different ways. One organization may rely on formal governance structures, documented procedures, and predefined workflows. Another may achieve similar outcomes through strong collaboration, experienced practitioners, and adaptive working methods.

    The capability is the same. The implementation differs.

    Capabilities and Practices

    This distinction becomes clearer when separating capabilities from practices.

    A capability describes an outcome-oriented ability.

    A practice describes one way of realizing that ability.

    For example, an organization may have the capability to manage quality risks effectively. The practices used to support that capability could include:

    • Risk workshops
    • Risk matrices
    • Exploratory testing charters
    • Failure mode analysis
    • Automated risk detection
    • AI-assisted analysis

    None of these practices are the capability itself. They are merely different ways of expressing it.

    This distinction matters because practices evolve continuously. New techniques emerge, old techniques disappear, and fashionable methods come and go. The underlying capability, however, remains relevant.

    The Limits of Process Assessments

    Many traditional assessments unintentionally reward compliance rather than effectiveness.

    Consider a common assessment question:

    Is there a documented test strategy?

    The existence of a document may provide evidence of organizational discipline. It does not demonstrate that the organization can make sound testing decisions.

    Similarly:

    • A retrospective does not prove learning.
    • A dashboard does not prove insight.
    • A governance process does not prove control.
    • A strategy document does not prove strategic alignment.

    These artifacts may indicate capability. They are not proof of capability.

    The real question is whether the organization can consistently achieve the desired outcome.

    What Should Be Assessed?

    This leads to a different perspective on organizational assessments. Rather than asking whether predefined processes exist, we should ask whether the organization possesses the capabilities required to achieve its objectives.

    Processes remain important. Practices remain important. Artifacts remain important. But they should be treated as evidence rather than objectives.

    The purpose of an assessment is not to determine whether an organization resembles a reference process model.

    The purpose is to understand what the organization is capable of achieving.

    A Working Hypothesis

    This leads me to a hypothesis that increasingly influences how I design assessments:

    Organizations are more meaningfully assessed through their capabilities than through their compliance with predefined process models.

    Processes are valuable. Practices are valuable. But they are ultimately means rather than ends. What matters is not whether an organization follows the prescribed path. What matters is whether it can reliably achieve the outcomes that the path was intended to support.

  • How This Blog Came to Be

    This wasn’t supposed to happen.

    A few weeks ago, all I wanted was a better CV.

    After many years in software development, testing, quality engineering and organisational assessments, my CV had become what many long careers become: a chronological list of projects, responsibilities and technologies. Accurate enough, but not particularly insightful. So I asked an AI to review it.

    I expected editorial assistance. Better wording. Better structure. Perhaps a few suggestions on what to remove or emphasize. Instead, something rather unexpected happened.

    The conversation moved from my CV to my LinkedIn profile. From there, it became a discussion about recurring themes in my career and what seemed to distinguish me from others with similar backgrounds. Then came a SWOT analysis. Then conversations about positioning and professional identity. Then questions about what kind of work I genuinely enjoy, where I add the most value and, perhaps more importantly, where I don’t.

    Somewhere along the way I realised we were no longer talking about my CV at all. We were talking about me. Or more specifically, about the story my career told when viewed as a whole rather than as a sequence of individual jobs.

    The discussion became increasingly reflective. If I have another decade or so left in my professional career, how do I actually want to spend it? What do I want to be known for? What kind of problems do I most enjoy solving? Where can I contribute something that isn’t simply another pair of experienced hands?

    What surprised me most wasn’t that AI could rewrite sentences or suggest bullet points. It was that it could synthesize years of information, recognise patterns across them and offer perspectives that I hadn’t previously articulated myself. Sometimes it asked excellent questions. Sometimes it challenged my assumptions. Sometimes it proposed interpretations that immediately resonated.

    Not every suggestion was right. Many weren’t. But enough of them were insightful that they changed the direction of the conversation. And, in a very real sense, they changed the direction of my thinking.

    Eventually, the discussion turned into ideas for articles. Then themes. Then potential series of posts. And eventually, almost without noticing it, I found myself planning a blog. That’s why you’re reading this.

    This won’t be a blog about AI, although AI will undoubtedly appear from time to time. It’s a blog about software delivery, quality engineering, organizational assessments and continuous improvement. It’s about understanding complex systems, identifying patterns and helping organisations become better at building software.

    Ironically, that’s also what happened to me. An exercise that started with improving a CV became an assessment of something much larger: my own experience, strengths, motivations and direction. It also left me with a hypothesis that I suspect will appear repeatedly in future posts.

    The most interesting outcomes don’t necessarily come from humans or AI working in isolation. They come from the interaction between the two. I started the conversation expecting editorial assistance. I ended it with a clearer understanding of my own career and a completely new set of ideas about where to take it next.

  • Start With Why

    Why this blog

    I’ve spent much of my career assessing and improving software delivery organizations. Along the way, I became increasingly interested in the assessment itself: What constitutes evidence? How should confidence be communicated? Are we assessing processes, or capabilities? And can assessment methodology be separated from domain knowledge?

    This blog is a collection of field notes rather than finished theories. It’s where I explore ideas, question assumptions, and try to develop clearer concepts based on practical experience and ongoing reflection.

    While many examples come from software quality and testing, my interest is broader: evidence-based assessment of organizational capabilities and the models we use to understand them.


    Why “Field Notes”

    These aren’t polished frameworks or universal truths. They’re observations from practice, hypotheses in development, and attempts to make sense of recurring patterns I’ve encountered over the years. Some ideas will mature. Others will be discarded. The purpose is not to be right, but to make my thinking visible and open to scrutiny.