What Price Quality?
Thursday, December 4th, 2008What Price Quality?
INTRODUCTION
We now live in a fast paced society where we expect products and services to be delivered rapidly (some say “yesterday”), cheaply, and with a high degree of quality. This is particularly true in the systems выход из депрессии and software industry. If we lived in a perfect world, systems and software would be developed rapidly and inexpensively, they would effectively satisfy business needs, and would be easy to maintain and modify. There is only one problem with this scenario: it is a fantasy. In reality, we live in a “disposable” world where systems and software are slapped together in the hopes everything will hold together and will pacify the end-user for the moment. Some people believe striving for a Utopian world is an impossibility and, as such, resign themselves to rewriting systems and software time and again as opposed to designing them to be industrial strength.
Improving speed in the development process is relatively simple to accomplish; e.g., the plethora of programming tools available. But adding quality into a product is something entirely different. From the outset we must recognize that quality doesn’t come naturally to people anymore. Back when there was a sense of craftsmanship, quality was rarely a problem. This is back when people identified with their work products, and strove to seek perfection as it was a reflection of their character. Corners were not cut and products were made to last. Unfortunately, we no longer live in such times and people tend to disassociate their work from their personal lives. Further, the speed and sophistication of our tools leads us to believe we are producing quality products. The reality is that our tools are only as good as the people using them, not the other way around.
A PERFECT WORLD
How one person perceives quality may be entirely дневник different than another’s. This is because we tend to have different perspectives in how to build something, e.g., whereas one person may build a product телефон слайдер one way, another may build it using an entirely different approach. This means products are commonly built using inconsistent methods. Let me give you some examples:
- If we lived in a perfect world, we would have a standardized approach for defining requirements, thereby everyone would be operating with a standard approach for scrutinizing requirements. But the reality is our approach to requirements definition is redefined with each development project, thereby making it impossible to validate requirements with any consistency.
- If we lived in a perfect world, developers would be working with standard data definitions that would include validation/editing rules, among other things. This would result in a consistent approach in the use of data (aka “Data Cleanliness”) and would promote system integration through data sharing. But the reality is that each programmer specifies the use of data (including its physical characteristics and validation/editing rules) on a program by program basis, thereby defeating
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