Test Management or Quality Management

Interestingly, I've been thinking about test management and whether this is the correct term to be used for Enterprise Tester, our test management platform. Test Management seems to me to be a limited term that is a subset of the true aim as to what we are looking to achieve. Sure adding tests, executing tests and reporting on tests are all part of the story. But what about intelligent information gathering around test cycles that have occurred (or sprints if you are using agile).
I like the term 'Quality Hub' since we take the view that test management is a part of the Quality initiative across an organisation, yes stopping bugs being released into the wild is one thing, but actually preventing bugs occurring through the life cycle of the product is another. The latter depends on systems, processes and people that are in concert with each other with an aim of quality output no matter what stage of the production process they are in. A sort of self healing way of working where adjustments are many and frequent as measurement data is feed back to each section or team. This also brings to mind an interesting question "What is quality?" Traditionally I would have said no (or many few) bugs found within the product would constitute a quality product. I'm wonder about this now days with the advent of agile practice, and while I'm not an avid agile fan I like some of the concepts though struggle with others so sit squarely in the middle borrowing techniques from one or the other in a more blended (and what I believe has greater benefits overall) approach.

But interestingly enough I've recently spent a good portion of time walking to and from a client site and having to cross roads at certain points. Now this one day I took the most direct route to the client site (not surprisingly) but interestingly another person (a stranger I didn't know) took a different route to mine but managed to get there first. Now it wasn't that they went the most direct way, nor were they moving faster instead they managed to get the luck of lights changing while I stood waiting to be able to cross the road. This while a simplistic example got me thinking... is it just better to keep moving toward your goal no matter whether it's the fastest or most direct way as long as you continue to move forward? Maybe this is the best thing to do.

This thinking also leads me in a roundabout way to have an answer to the question "What is quality?" Maybe quality has to be measured over a period of time? Maybe something that is perceived to be poor quality now could be high quality in the long term? or vice versa maybe something seen as high quality now could be low quality over the long term?
Take our approach to the product development of Enterprise Tester. We look to release a new version every 6 - 8 weeks and have been doing so for the last two years and have managed to release 18 versions over this time. Do we get it right every time? I'd like to think so, but if we don't what do we do? Our way around this was to have fast release cycles so in quick fashion we can make updates and get back to customers with resolutions or improvements. Call it an insurance policy if you will.
So how do other product manufactures get on with six or twelve month release cycles? To that matter, how do their customers deal with it? The customers business doesn't stop so do they just incur the additional cost through inefficiency? Surely it is madness to continue under this slow release model.

So how do customers look to ensure that they are buying into a 'quality' product? Do they have criteria that they look at to ensure the product they purchase has the commitment of the organisation to continue over the long term to develop, improve, support and stand by their customers ensuring that their customers business runs smoothly on the platform they provide?

Does this mean that existing products that have slow release cycles that are perceived to be of 'high quality' are now actually bad purchases? If they can't change and improve fast enough and leave their customers businesses with more cost then what is the justification? Could it be a perception of lower risk? It does seem that risk or perceived risk is top of mind with organisations, though in this case again maybe perceived low risk now could be an indicator of high long term risk.

Interested in your thoughts.