How to explain Quality Coach (to your CTO)

At some point, an engineering manager, principal engineer, delivery lead, or product manager is going to ask you "exactly what does a quality coach do?". Be ready for this question. Here's an explainer that frames the role in their terms.

Why in their terms?

When people hear something new, they relate it to their existing knowledge. In this case, probably either that of a QA or an agile coach. This is normal, it's our brain way of adding (or rejecting) new knowledge into our existing brain's mental model of what a quality professional does.

I use this to my advantage. I've come up with a way of describing the quality coach role in terms of roles people are familiar with. I describe the quality coach role in terms of a delivery lead, a product manager, a quality professional and a software developer. The following is an overview of how those roles relate to quality.