> If a company tells you that it has a special pool of coders who add tests, separate from the ones that write the actual code, that is a bad sign that they know how to do testing.

I disagree this is necessarily a bad sign. The people writing the code have blind spots and they may also not necessarily be experts at testing. Probably the highest quality software I ever worked on was in a setup where we had a combination of the developers writing tests plus dedicated people who wrote only tests. That said, I think this setup is secondary to the quality and experience of the teams and the individuals.

> A huge chunk of the value is forcing the person who makes the front line decisions to think about what they are doing.

I would look at this differently and say a huge chunk of the value is coming from making sure you have the right person in the front line. The wrong person being "forced" to make decisions they're not good at is not going to help you a lot. The right person doesn't need forcing to make the right decisions. People and culture drive outcomes and not process.