Craft is a decision, not a department

Every growing company says it cares about quality. Very few can point to the moment a decision was made in its favour. At Corvid the design team went from four people to eighty in five years, and the work did not get worse. That was not luck or taste. It came from a handful of unglamorous choices: who is allowed to say a feature is not ready, what a critique is for, and which details are worth a week of engineering time.

Anika opens Summit with the decisions that held, the ones that failed, and the one rule she would keep if she could keep only one. Expect real screens, real disagreements and the numbers behind them, including what quality cost and what it saved.

This is a talk for anyone who ships software with other people, not only designers. Craft belongs to the whole team, and it survives growth only when someone decides it should.

What you will take away

• A definition of “ready to ship” that design, engineering and product can hold each other to
• How Corvid runs critique at eighty people without it turning into a gate or a performance
• The three quality investments that paid for themselves, with the figures