exec-quality-narrative
Overview
QA leaders usually walk into a QBR with the data inverted: twelve slides of metrics building toward a conclusion on slide thirteen. Executives read in the opposite direction. The Minto Pyramid Principle (Barbara Minto, The Pyramid Principle: Logic in Writing and Thinking, ISBN 978-0273710516) prescribes that "ideas should be communicated in a pyramid format in which ideas are organized top-down, starting with a main idea", with groupings under it that are MECE - mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive - because, per Minto, one "can't derive an idea from a grouping unless the ideas in the grouping are logically the same, and in logical order" (Barbara Minto, Wikipedia). The book's opening device is SCQA: Situation, Complication, Question, Answer - state the stable context, the thing that changed, the question that raises, and the answer immediately.
This skill applies that structure to quality data your existing test tooling already produces: the answer at the top, two to four MECE support groups under it, every number citing the artifact it came from.
When to use
- A QBR, board update, or exec quality review is scheduled and the inputs (digests, KPI tables, OKR grades) exist but read as data, not narrative.
- Leadership asks "is quality getting better or worse?" and the honest answer needs structure plus evidence rather than a dashboard link.
- A quality investment ask (headcount, tooling, time) needs an exec-shaped argument built on the quarter's evidence.
Do not use this skill to:
- Compute the underlying metrics - the
qa-manager agent (this plugin) computes single-team digests from CI and tracker data, and quality-status-digest Part 2 rolls teams into a portfolio review. This skill starts where they end.
- Draft next quarter's commitments - OKR drafting is out of scope; the narrative may end by pointing at the team's OKR set, not by inventing one.
- Report to engineering peers. The audience here holds budget, not backlogs; a sprint-level test report is a different artifact.
Step 1 - Capture the inputs
| Input | Source | Role in the narrative |
|---|
| Quality digests | Per-team quality digest output, or equivalent | Pass-rate trend, escape counts, flake debt with citations already attached |
| Portfolio roll-up | Portfolio roll-up output, if multi-team | Cross-team table, risk heatmap, capacity view |
| DORA delivery metrics | CI / deploy data per dora.dev | Delivery context executives often already know from engineering reporting |
| OKR grading | The team's OKR set + end-of-quarter grades | Commitment-vs-delivery evidence |
| Escape trend | Defect-tracker trend (e.g., a defect-trend narrative) | The quality outcome line executives care about most |
| Audience + ask | Who reads this, and what decision (if any) is being requested | Determines the Answer sentence and whether the narrative is informational or an investment case |
Halt with UNCITED_INPUTS if the supplied numbers carry no source artifacts: a narrative built on unattributed figures collapses at the first follow-up question.
Step 2 - Verify the DORA vocabulary before using it
Executives increasingly hear DORA terms from engineering leadership, so use them precisely. DORA defines five software delivery metrics, evolved from the original four keys and grouped as throughput and instability; the verbatim definitions are in references/dora-metrics.md.
Two precision rules for the narrative: (1) escape-defect rate is a defect-leakage metric, not a DORA metric - DORA measures delivery; do not blend them under one label (single-team digest reporting draws the same line); (2) if the org still says "the four keys", note the recovery-time rename rather than silently mixing old and new names.
Step 3 - Write the pyramid top: SCQA + the Answer sentence
Draft the governing thought before touching slides. Per the SCQA device:
- Situation: the stable fact the audience already accepts ("We ship weekly to 40k customers; quality reporting covers all four product teams.")
- Complication: what changed ("Q2 doubled deployment frequency while QA headcount was flat.")
- Question: the question that complication forces ("Did quality hold?")
- Answer: one sentence, with the trend and the cost attached ("Quality held on three of four teams; checkout regressed and needs one decision from this group.")
The Answer sentence is the narrative's title. If it cannot be written, the analysis is not done; go back to the inputs, not to the slide deck.
Step 4 - Build 2 - 4 MECE support groups
Group every finding under headers that do not overlap and jointly cover the story. A grouping that works repeatedly for quality narratives: outcomes (escapes, incidents, customer-visible quality), delivery (DORA metrics, cycle time), commitments (OKR grades), capacity/risk (staffing, flake debt, bus factors). Each group gets one claim sentence supported by cited numbers; per Minto, the items inside a group must be "logically the same" (Wikipedia, Barbara Minto) - do not mix an outcome stat into the delivery group because it is impressive.
Step 5 - Emit the narrative
Lead with the Answer sentence as the title, follow with SCQA in two lines, then the 2 - 4 MECE groups, then the ask as its own header. Each group carries one claim sentence plus cited numbers. Minimal shape:
# Quality QBR - <quarter>
**Answer first:** <trend on N-1 of N teams; the one regression; the one decision needed>.
**Situation.** <stable context>. **Complication.** <what changed, cited>. **Question.** <did quality hold?>
## 1. Outcomes ... ## 2. Delivery ... ## 3. Commitments ... ## 4. The decision
Everything below this layer in the real document is appendix - per-team tables, the digests themselves, methodology - that executives can descend into but do not need to reach the answer. See references/qbr-narrative-example.md for the fully worked QBR narrative with real numbers and their sources.
Anti-patterns
| Anti-pattern | Why it fails | Fix |
|---|
| Conclusion on the last slide | Executives decide in the first two minutes; the build-up reads as hedging | Answer-first per the pyramid |
| Metric dump as narrative | Data without a governing claim delegates the synthesis to the reader | Step 3: no deck before the Answer sentence exists |
| Overlapping groups | The same fact argued twice reads as padding; MECE exists to prevent it | Step 4 grouping check |
| Calling escape rate a DORA metric | Mislabels defect leakage as delivery performance; one informed exec follow-up sinks the room's trust | Step 2 vocabulary rules (dora.dev) |
| Uncited numbers | First "where is that from?" without an answer discredits the cited ones too | Step 1 halts on uncited inputs |
| Good-news filtering | Hiding the checkout regression converts a report into a liability when it surfaces anyway | The Complication slot exists precisely for the bad news |
| Burying the ask | A decision request hidden in slide 11 gets no decision | The ask is a top-level group with its own header |
Limitations
- Garbage in, story out. The narrative inherits the quality of the digests and trackers beneath it; this skill structures evidence, it cannot create it.
- SCQA and the pyramid are cited to the book. The Minto sources fetchable online describe the pyramid and MECE; SCQA's full treatment is in the book itself (cited in References), used here as a management framework.
- No automatic data pulls. This skill consumes outputs of the agents named in Step 1; wiring live dashboards into prose is out of scope.
- One narrative, one audience. A board version and an engineering-leadership version differ in Answer and asks; produce two artifacts rather than one compromise.
Hand-off targets
- Single-team digest inputs → the
qa-manager agent (this plugin).
- Multi-team portfolio inputs →
quality-status-digest Part 2 portfolio roll-up (this plugin).
- Next quarter's commitments the narrative points at → the team's own OKR planning artifacts.
- Capability asks surfaced in the narrative → capability gap analysis for the train-vs-hire grounding.
References
- Barbara Minto, The Pyramid Principle: Logic in Writing and Thinking, ISBN 978-0273710516 - pyramid structure, SCQA opening, answer-first discipline.
- Barbara Minto (Wikipedia) - pyramid format "organized top-down, starting with a main idea"; MECE; the logical-grouping quote: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Minto (fetched 2026-06-10).
- DORA software delivery metrics - five-metric model and verbatim definitions used in Step 2: https://dora.dev/guides/dora-metrics-four-keys/ (fetched 2026-06-10).
- The
qa-manager agent and quality-status-digest (this plugin) - the upstream producers of this skill's digest and roll-up inputs.