When Quality Arrives with Cold Coffee
In most teams I know, quality is that word whispered at the end — like asking for the check after a long dinner.
The code is written, integrated, almost ready for production… and suddenly the QA team shows up with an Excel sheet that looks like a war report.
The release freezes, developers defend every line as if it were their child, the business drums its fingers, and the tester ends up being the villain of the story.
Why does this happen? Because we still think of quality as a plug at the end of the pipe — something to verify, not something to build.
But truly successful projects don’t work that way.
With Agile, CI/CD, and clients expecting value every two weeks, we need quality to flow like a river — from the very first idea to the final deploy.
For years, we’ve helped teams turn that plug into a current.
We don’t sell more tests or magic tools; we help drive a cultural shift, so that quality stops being a department and becomes the heartbeat of the work itself.
From Border Guard to Travel Companion
The traditional model is a production line: design → development → testing.
Each stage hands off to the next as if they were different countries.
QA acts like customs: checking the passport and deciding if the product crosses the border or goes back to the factory.
The problem isn’t control — it’s timing.
When a defect is found late:
- It’s expensive: fixing something once integrated costs 10, 50, even 100 times more than catching it at the first line of code.
- It loses meaning: QA validates syntax but doesn’t always know if it solves the user’s pain.
- It builds trenches: devs vs. testers, business vs. tech — everyone points fingers instead of finding solutions.
Fluid Quality (as we call it in the PAREX framework) proposes the opposite: erase the borders.
The business analyst, the developer, and the tester speak the same language from day one.
The specification isn’t a document that travels — it’s a conversation that becomes automated tests before the first function is even written.
As Dalia Trujillo, one of the minds behind PAREX, puts it:
“The real leap happens when the customer’s need becomes an executable scenario — one that the code respects and the business can read.”
Living traceability, not dead paperwork.
The Four Pillars That Keep the River Flowing
1. Shared Responsibility (or “We All Row”)
Quality isn’t “QA’s job.” It’s like safety on a ship: everyone checks for holes, not just the captain.
- The Product Owner defines what has value and when it’s done.
- The developer writes self-tested code (TDD).
- The tester provides clear criteria from the first meeting and automates what’s repeatable.
Instead of “I build, you break,” it becomes “We build together, we verify together.”
Inspired by Use Case 3.0, each story carries a continuous thread — from the business goal to the last log line.
2. Shift-Left: Testing Before Building
Shifting testing “to the left” means validating while designing — not after construction.
- Acceptance criteria written on the same board where the flow is drawn.
- BDD scenarios that become living tests before the first git push.
- Pipelines that fail in seconds, not overnight.
With our partners, we set up these pipelines in just weeks — the ROI appears in the first sprint: fewer surprises, more confidence.
3. Feedback in Drops, Not Buckets
A report of 40 bugs on release day is a bucket of cold water.
Micro-alerts on every commit are refreshing drops.
- Unit tests → 2 seconds.
- Contract tests → 10 seconds.
- Production metrics → real-time.
Observability stops being “checking logs when something explodes” and becomes the team’s daily compass.
4. The Water Metaphor (Because Sometimes You Need Poetry)
If quality is just a filter at the end, any pebble clogs it.
But if it’s a plumbing system with sensors, valves, and automatic cleaning, the water runs crystal clear to every tap.
Each stage has its valve:
- Ideation: Does this solve a real pain?
- Code: Can it test itself?
- Integration: Does it break something that already worked?
- Production: Does the user use it — and smile?
No stagnant water. Everything flows — or drains.
How to Start Tomorrow Morning
- Speak a common language: use concrete examples instead of abstract requirements (BDD gives you the grammar).
- Quality with your morning coffee: include the tester in backlog refinement — let them bring the coffee and the criteria.
- Automate the boring stuff: unit tests, BDD, smoke tests in the pipeline.
- Measure what hurts: lead time, % of stories with acceptance criteria, MTTR.
- Celebrate mistakes: short, blameless retros — with beer if needed.
Enjisst applies this through PAREX in audits and coaching; Taqtical brings it to life in pipelines and dashboards.
Metrics That Tell the Story
| Metric | What It Tells You | Realistic Goal |
| Defect detection time | When does it hurt? | < 24 h |
| Stories with clear criteria | Are we all speaking the same language? | > 90% |
| Regressions per sprint | Do we break what used to work? | < 10% |
| MTTR | How fast do we recover? | < 1 day |
| Dev/QA satisfaction | Do we still like each other? | 😊 |
A Real Case: The Fintech That Stopped Drowning
A mid-sized fintech in Latin America used to deliver every release with 40% rework.
QA found functional errors the night before launch; deployments were delayed by three weeks.
The atmosphere was one of trenches and tension.
They achieved:
- “Three amigos” sessions (PO + Dev + QA) for every story.
- BDD with Enjisst, integrated into GitLab CI.
- Shared dashboard with the business (lead time visible to all).
Results:
- Critical defects ↓ 60%.
- Lead time from 12 → 7 days.
- The business started asking “When’s the next release?” instead of “Are you sure it won’t break?”
Closing: Quality Is Lived, Not Signed
Fluid Quality isn’t another methodology to hang on the wall — it’s a shift in the core question:
Before: “Did you test it?”
Now: “How do we know it’s working right now?”
When quality flows, software stops being a black box opened at the end and becomes a river everyone can see, touch, and improve every day.
Ready to pull the plug and open the gates? Let’s talk.