From Gatekeeper to Coach: How Quality Managers in Tech Companies Drive Business Excellence

The traditional quality manager role isn't wrong—it's incomplete. And recognizing this gap represents one of the biggest opportunities for tech companies today.

 


⌨️ Dirk Kowalewski   ⏱️ 9 Min. Read

For decades, quality management in software has meant gatekeeping: reviewing requirements, running test cycles, blocking releases until bugs were fixed. This approach was necessary when software releases happened quarterly and teams were small. Many quality managers still operate in this mode today—and for good reasons. Regulations, standards, and organizational structures often require it.

 

But here's the tension: In today's fast-paced tech landscape—where companies deploy hundreds of times per day and every team member's decision affects customer experience—the gatekeeper model alone is no longer sufficient. Quality managers who spend only their time finding bugs and being the last checkpoint before production are operating below their potential impact.

This isn't about abandoning what works. It's about expanding it. As Ralf Kohlen describes in "Quality Reinvented!": "Als Qualitätsmanager hatte ich zwei Hauptaufgaben: Die Bearbeitung von Nicht-Qualität (Fehler) und die Aufrechterhaltung der Zertifizierungen. Das hatte ich mir ganz anders vorgestellt... Ich wollte mehr Sinn in meiner Arbeit!" (As a quality manager, I had two main tasks: dealing with non-quality (defects) and maintaining certifications. I had imagined it completely differently... I wanted more meaning in my work!").

This frustration reflects a widespread reality: quality managers have the organizational position, technical credibility, and systems thinking required to drive transformation—but are often limited to gatekeeping functions.

This shift represents an evolution, not a revolution. Quality managers can begin this transition from wherever they stand today, regardless of their organization's culture or constraints.

Why This Transformation Matters

The shift from quality gatekeeper to quality coach is recognized by leading professional organizations and backed by both academic research and practical methodologies.

The American Society for Quality (ASQ) explicitly defines this expanded role in their Certified Manager of Quality/Organizational Excellence (CMQ/OE) certification, which includes four dimensions: System Manager, Organizational Developer, Performance Manager, and Business Coach. This Body of Knowledge, based on job analysis studies involving thousands of quality professionals worldwide, recognizes that sustainable quality transformation requires facilitation, coaching, and culture development—not just process enforcement.

The Deutsche Gesellschaft für Qualität (DGQ) research reveals a critical gap: only 38-45% of quality managers currently see themselves as proactive organizational developers, despite this being recognized as the essential future state of the profession.

The Business Quality Coaching (BQC) framework, developed by Ralf Kohlen and Rudolf A. Müller in their book "Quality Reinvented!", provides a practical methodology for this transformation. BQC is "eine Synergie aus den wertschöpfenden Komponenten des Qualitätsmanagements und Business Coaching" (a synergy of the value-creating components of quality management and business coaching). The framework is built on three core principles:

 

  • Assumption of capability: People and organizations have the necessary potential to solve their problems—they need help uncovering and developing it, not having solutions imposed
  • Solution focus: Shift from problem analysis to solution finding with solution-oriented language
  • Systems thinking: Behaviors emerge from systems—create systems that enable quality to emerge naturally

Harvard Business School research supports this evolution. Michael Beer's work on Total Quality Management transformations demonstrates why pure top-down quality programs fail, showing that sustainable transformation depends fundamentally on leadership quality, honest communication, and change management competency—exactly the skills that define quality managers operating as coaches.


Research shows that while training alone produces a 22.4% increase in productivity, combining training with coaching increases that figure to 88%. Here's what matters: Coaching scales exponentially. A gatekeeper's impact is constrained by their personal capacity—the hours in their day, the releases they can review. A coach's impact multiplies with each team they enable to own quality independently.

The Mindset Shift: From Expert to Developer

Evolution requires a fundamental shift, but as a quality manager, you can make it gradually from your current position.

As the ASQ CMQ/OE framework describes, you're evolving from being purely a System Manager to also being an Organizational Developer and Business Coach. You remain accountable for the quality management system. But your expanded role is to build an organization where every team is accountable for the quality they deliver.

The Business Quality Coaching approach "wirkt wie ein Spiegel, in dem der Betrachter sich und sein Umfeld anders wahrnimmt und dann Veränderungen aus innerer Überzeugung vornimmt" (works like a mirror in which people perceive themselves and their environment differently and then make changes from inner conviction).

Your success is measured not just by what you personally catch or fix, but increasingly by what teams catch and fix themselves. It's measured by quality conversations that happen without you in the room, by teams that redesign processes after incidents, by engineers who voluntarily share quality learnings.

The good news: You don't need organizational permission to start coaching. Every interaction is a choice. When a team asks about a quality issue, you can give them the answer (gatekeeper) or ask questions that help them discover it (coach). These micro-decisions, compounded over time, create the transformation.

What Quality Coaching Looks Like in Practice

Throughout the Day: Attend meetings listening for quality risks and asking helpful questions. Hold office hours where anyone can drop by. Conduct mini-coaching sessions. Review design documents and retrospectives. Connect people across teams—acting as facilitator and change agents, not just auditor.

Weekly Rhythms: Gather quality advocates to share learnings. Dig deeper into quality metrics. Conduct strategic coaching sessions. Brief leadership using the language of organizational development—culture, capability building, strategic alignment. Create quality resources—playbooks, training materials, and easy to use tools.

Monthly Activities: Prepare quality business reviews connecting metrics to organizational capability. Rotate through teams conducting assessments focused on capability gaps, not just compliance. Step back to thinking about longer-term strategy and culture evolution.

Quarterly Priorities: Assess progress on longer-term initiatives. Invest in your development through facilitation training, coaching skills, change management competencies. Identify and recognize teams who've made significant improvements. Gather feedback from teams you coach.

Core Coaching Strategies

Build Relationships Before Processes: Beer's Harvard research emphasizes that sustainable change depends on honest communication and genuine relationships. Quality transformation is about changing behavior, and behavior change requires trust.

Make Quality Visible and Actionable: Work with teams to surface quality metrics that matter. Create dashboards showing trends. Coach teams on interpreting data and deciding what to do—developing analytical capability, not just compliance.

Teach Through Questions: The ASQ CMQ/OE and BQC frameworks emphasize facilitation and coaching competencies. When you see a quality risk, ask questions that help teams discover the issue: "What could go wrong?" "How will you know if this works?" The BQC approach emphasizes "lösungsorientierte Sprache" (solution-oriented language)—shifting focus from problem analysis to solution finding.

Create Learning Systems: Every quality issue is a learning opportunity. Help teams establish practices that capture and share learnings—retrospectives, documentation, knowledge sharing. This builds organizational capability over time.

Build Quality Literacy: Create training curriculum delivered in digestible pieces—brown bag lunches, short workshops. The ASQ framework recognizes that quality professionals must be trainers and mentors, not just technical experts.

Influence Up: Beer's research shows that leadership quality and management commitment are critical success factors. Provide regular business reviews. Encourage executives to visibly model quality behaviors.

Work at the System Level: As BQC emphasizes, "Menschen verhalten sich so, wie es das System vermeintlich von ihnen verlangt" (people behave as the system seemingly demands of them). Create systems that enable quality to emerge naturally rather than forcing compliance.

The Professional Recognition Gap

DGQ research reveals that only 38-45% of quality managers see themselves as proactive organizational developers and coaches, despite this being the recognized future state. Many are still expected to operate primarily as gatekeepers, even though professional organizations like ASQ and DGQ have defined the expanded role.

This creates both challenge and opportunity. Quality managers who demonstrate the value of the coaching approach—building organizational capability rather than just checking compliance—position themselves as strategic partners. As "Quality Reinvented!" argues, this transformation is necessary "um auf dem Fundament eines radikal neuen Qualitätsverständnisses unsere Organisationen zukunftsgerichtet umzubauen" (to rebuild our organizations for the future on the foundation of a radically new understanding of quality).

Starting Your Transformation

 

The ASQ CMQ/OE certification provides a roadmap. The DGQ research shows the gap. Beer's Harvard work explains why it matters. "Quality Reinvented!" provides a practical methodology. But you can start today:

Start small. Pick one team to partner with differently. Try asking three questions before giving an answer. Run one pilot workshop. Create one quality metric that matters to the business. Build one success story demonstrating capability-building over compliance-checking.

Work within your constraints. If you're required to gate releases, do it—but use those gates as teaching moments. If you must write test plans, involve the team. Every required activity can become a coaching opportunity. As Kohlen and Müller demonstrate with "Coachendes Auditieren" (coaching-based auditing), even mandatory audits can become development opportunities.

Build on what exists. You already attend meetings, review documents, interact with teams. You don't need new activities—you need new approaches to existing activities. Every conversation is an opportunity to shift from telling to asking, from fixing to teaching, from controlling to enabling.

Consider formal development. The ASQ CMQ/OE certification, DGQ organizational development programs, or BQC training provide structured paths to develop these competencies and professional credibility.

Quality Leadership

The companies that master quality coaching build organizations where quality is a competitive advantage. Where engineers grow into quality-conscious professionals. Where quality conversations happen naturally because everyone understands their role in creating exceptional products. That's not just better quality management. That's quality leadership.

Quality, at its essence, is simple: fulfill requirements. The strategic question is: What are your requirements? Not compliance checklists—the requirements that flow from your business strategy. What must your people, processes, and products deliver to execute your strategy?

This is the pivot point—the Dreh- und Angelpunkt as Germans say, the central hinge—where quality becomes the central driver of business excellence. When quality managers help organizations clarify these strategic requirements and build the capability to fulfill them, they transform quality from a gatekeeping function into the engine of strategic execution.

 

That's quality leadership.

 

It starts with one decision: stop being the person accountable for quality, and start being the person who builds an organization where teams are accountable for their own quality.

The transformation begins with your next conversation.

 

Contact me for an exploratory conversation initial: dirk@bestformconsulting.com

Checklist (Download)

 

Sources

 

 

  • Kohlen, R., & Müller, R. A. (2020). Quality Reinvented!
    Zusammenarbeit kreativ gestalten, Organisation sinnstiftend entwickeln, ISO 9001 wertschöpfend einsetzen. München: Hanser Verlag. ISBN 978-3-446-46411-7. Book: https://www.hanser-fachbuch.de/fachbuch/artikel/9783446464117
    https://quality-reinvented.com/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Excellence Resources

 

For leaders seeking to implement systematic excellence approaches, these resources offer deeper insights: