Our Ecosystem, Our Responsibility

By Helen Kendrick - Test Manager, Roq

Within Roq, we firmly believe quality has to be embedded in our day-to day work and is everyone’s responsibility, and our views are epitomised by Peter Drucker’s well-known quote: 

Quality in a service or product is not what you put into it. It is what the client or customer gets out of it.

We developed our Quality Engineering Ecosystem to communicate that message to all our colleagues and to share with our clients. In developing it, we learned that we have been doing many aspects of this for years, but the Ecosystem brings it together in one clear picture, illustrating the synergies. As a Test Manager, I find it is a perfect vehicle for explaining what quality means and how we achieve it to existing and new clients. It forms a central part of our in-house training and assessment that I created with other senior colleagues to help all Roq colleagues develop a consistent ‘mindset’ approach to everything we do.   

Roq’s Quality Engineering (QE) Ecosystem shows how our three core services of Consultancy, Functional and Non-functional, along with our comprehensive set of accelerators, integrate to form a complete service offering for our clients. It also outlines our five Quality Engineering principles that our consultants focus on in delivering a fantastic service. 

Upskilling The Team

During the internal launch of our Ecosystem, we ran a series of ‘Roq Bytes’ (mini-internal knowledge sharing sessions) to familiarise all of our colleagues from every corner of the business with our ways of working. These sessions were taken in with much intrigue and prompted plenty of questions from our colleagues who were hungry to learn more. 

To support our colleagues in continuing to deliver on each element of the Roq Quality Engineering Ecosystem, we then developed and ran more in-depth training sessions, covering all aspects of the Ecosystem.  

Every Roq colleague from Talent Acquisition and Finance, to Sales and Delivery was encouraged to attend and complete an assessment based on their learnings.  

The Masterclass

We dubbed this new training course ‘The Quality Engineering Ecosystem Masterclass’, which addressed each of the five principles: 

• Automation First - We recognise the need to drive more efficiencies throughout the lifecycle, so always look to introduce automation where it makes sense to do so. We leverage best practice techniques and select tools appropriate to the client's need. 

• Continuous Improvement - We challenge ourselves and our clients to continually look at making small, but impactful change throughout our engagements. This ensures that the changes are manageable, measurable, and leave a positive legacy. 

• 360 Feedback - We implement feedback loops into all areas of the lifecycle, so that we can look to address issues as early as possible. By instilling this positive, open and trusting approach, clients build psychological safety in their teams to continually innovate and learn. 

• Management - We are committed to providing accurate visibility of delivery progress and to enable this we add the appropriate level of management support. Through on-going support and an inclusive governance approach, clients feel the benefit of the insight it can provide. 

• Coaching - We believe that a successful engagement is measured by leaving a client and their teams in a better place than when we started, so our consultants will help coach the wider team to bring everyone up to a higher level and develop teams at a pace suited to their needs. 

The Masterclass presented each of these formal definitions and then brought them to life with explanation, examples and breakout session activities in a number of small groups. These sessions worked well, as people could reflect and draw on their own experience to present back examples that we then discussed. The examples highlighted that the principles often overlap and there is synergy between them. They also demonstrated that colleagues in Roq are fully committed to our values, which we will come back to later in this article. 

Quality really IS everybody’s responsibility

As I alluded to earlier, the reason we included every Roq employee in the Masterclass, was that we want everyone to be fully up to speed on how important the Ecosystem is to our company and that it’s not just something that only our colleagues in Service Delivery need to be concerned with. Indeed, some of the examples we had in the Masterclass’ interactive sessions came from Marketing, the People Team and Sales, confirming that our Ecosystem is fit-for-purpose company wide, and very much relevant in all walks of life.  

It is vital that we can be confident that all colleagues understand how the principles underpin the Ecosystem and everything we do. To confirm this, we included a mandatory assessment as part of the Masterclass that everyone in Roq has taken (and passed!).  

A Values-Driven Mindset

Every member of our team is proud of our Values. They're in our DNA and you'll experience them in every engagement with us. Here's what they are and a little bit about what they mean to us. 

• Straight Talking - We say it how it is, using open, honest and direct communication. 

• Passionate - We care about what we do, which drives the energy and enthusiasm we bring to our work. 

• Excellence - We strive to be the best, getting satisfaction from the recognition we receive. 

• Commitment - We see it through, and we deliver on our promises whilst surpassing expectations. 

Our values are the Roq secret ingredient. They guide the way we work with our clients, how we engage with each other and how we relate to our communities. They underpin everything we do at Roq and they make all the difference. 

To deliver Quality Engineering effectively, a common understanding enables us to show clients that our values are not just words – we live by them. It was great to be able to align our Ecosystem principles with our company values in our Masterclass, bringing them to life with the real-life examples colleagues brought to our discussions. This re-affirms the values-driven mindset which Roq is proud of and sets us apart from other companies.  

Training Never Stops

As part of Roq’s plan for continuous improvement, refresher courses on the Ecosystem will be regularly carried out in the form of Roq Bytes, with more formal Masterclass courses on offer to new colleagues, apprentices and Academy Consultants. 

The Ecosystem training will now be part of Roq’s fully encompassing career and personal growth environment, which includes an annual training day allowance for all colleagues, dedicated Career Support Managers and the preference to promote from within. 

If you want to hear more about a career at Roq, check out our website or contact Sean.Gray@roq.co.uk 

If you’d like to learn about Roq’s Ecosystem and Services in more detail, you can once again find everything you need on the Roq website, or alternatively reach out to the team at ask@roq.co.uk.