Hi there, Matt here.

Writing is magical. But not the part where you put words on the page; at least, not for me. For me, the thing that happens before the words go on the page is the most transformative. Take today’s essay, for example: when I started researching it more than a year ago, I was sure of my thesis, that top-down quality mandates just don’t work. But in the process of reading dozens of books, articles, and papers, and by Doing My Own Research™, I found that reality isn’t quite so clear cut. Writing about quality has changed my mind about quality. So while I’m excited to share the result of this journey I’ve been on, the end result may only reflect a fraction of the joy I experienced in producing it. Put another way: you should try writing.

But first, a song. How should I describe 22º Halo? Extremely nostalgic, sure. But did music ever really sound like this? It’s more of a nostalgic feeling than a nostalgic sound. Melancholy, but warm and sunny. A whole vibe. Listen to Big Fire.

Now, on to the essay. As usual, you can (and should) read it on my website.

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Decentralizing Quality

Why moving judgment to the edges wins in the long run

Everyone agrees quality matters, but we can’t agree on what it is — or who gets to decide.

I’ve experienced the drive for quality in every design leadership role I’ve had. When it comes to software, we like to pretend that quality is a number. Dashboards stand in for judgment, A/B tests stand in for taste, and leaders try to will excellence into existence with reviews and mandates. But in today’s software market, confusing a KPI with quality isn’t just naïve; it’s fatal. Consumers’ attention spans are short, but their expectations are higher than ever; if your product fails to solve a real problem in an elegant way, you don’t get a second chance.

Some companies see the value of quality and are building their brand around it. Linear, for example, has launched an entire Conversations on Quality series, because quality has become the currency every builder wants to be paid in. In my time at Stripe, the pursuit of quality was nearly obsessive: 99.999% uptime (about five minutes of downtime a year) was the bare minimum. On the user experience side, we created a program to standardize and report on quality across every product team in the company. Last year, Malthe Sigurdsson (who led design at Stripe from 2015–2020) rejoined as “Head of Craft” to drive quality across design.

But more and more I’ve come to believe that quality isn’t a slogan, a program, or a scorecard. It’s a promise kept at the edge by the people doing the work. And, ideally, quality is fundamental to the product itself, where users can judge it without our permission. That’s the shift we need: away from heroics at the center, toward systems that make quality inevitable.

The stakes are high. Centralized quality — slogans, KPIs, executive decrees — can produce positive results, but it’s brittle. Decentralized quality — continuous feedback, distributed ownership, emergent standards — builds resilience. In this essay, I’d like to make the case that the future belongs to those who can decentralize their mindset and approach to quality.

What is quality?

We can’t build quality products if we can’t define what quality is. It’s a slippery thing to grab, though: In a 1984 MIT Sloan Management Review article, David Garvin described five different approaches to defining quality across eight dimensions.1 Ultimately, he gives up on defining quality and argues for multiple definitions. That’s a cop-out in my book, so here’s my one-sentence definition of quality.

Quality is the degree to which a product or service meets or exceeds user expectations.

Why did I land on that particular definition? First, I have a strong conviction in the subjectivity of quality. Put simply, quality depends on users’ or consumers’ perception. Expectations are dynamic and relative, so quality can vary by user and change over time as our expectations, the products we buy, or that competitive landscape evolves.

Next, I chose this definition to remove tastemakers from the equation. McDonald’s can be quality food because people buy a Big Mac and expect a double-decker hamburger with special sauce. Ikea can be quality furniture because college students expect an affordable desk for their dorm. It’s only when reality falls out of sync with expectations that quality is questionable.

Lastly, my definition of quality is especially adapted for software, where products and expectations change constantly. Subscription-based software-as-a-service is the norm, and apps are updated daily. We expect constant, cheap or free internet access thanks to cell phones, wifi, and satellite internet. Tools that still seem like science fiction — voice recognition, machine learning, and search algorithms — give us answers in milliseconds.

Building quality software is already hard. Before ChatGPT’s 2022 release, it was absurd to imagine a computer composing a structurally perfect 14-line sonnet about Iggy Azalea’s musical influences. Now, news of an AI passing the bar exam barely deserves a push alert. With technology advancing more and more rapidly, it will only get harder to understand and exceed consumer expectations.

This relentless acceleration puts enormous pressure on software builders. How do you maintain quality when the definition keeps shifting beneath your feet? Many companies bet on strong leadership — charismatic executives who can produce quality products with pithy catch phrases and aggressive incentives.

Ford Motor Company tried exactly this approach, and their story is a perfect study in leadership-driven quality control.

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