Everyone wants to build and use quality products, but software people debate endlessly the meaning of “quality” and how to achieve it. I have identified ten principles about quality that apply almost universally to software projects. This presentation explains why any software team that cares about quality needs to understand these principles and to choose development approaches consistent with them. The principles are:
Quality has many dimensions.
Quality begins with the requirements.
Customer involvement is the greatest determinant of software quality.
Both internal and external quality are important.
Developer discretion has a large influence on quality.
Quality must be made a conscious project priority.
You can pay now, or you can pay a lot more later.
Long-term productivity is the result of high quality.
Iteration is a key to software quality.
If you don’t design for quality, you won’t get it.
Karl Wiegers is Principal Consultant with Process Impact, a software process consulting and education company in Portland, Oregon. Previously, he spent 18 years at Eastman Kodak Company, where he held positions as a photographic research scientist, software developer, software manager, and software process and quality improvement leader. Karl received a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from the University of Illinois.
Karl is the author of the books Software Requirements, 2nd Edition, More About Software Requirements, Peer Reviews in Software, and Creating a Software Engineering Culture. He has also written 160 articles on many aspects of software development and management, chemistry, and military history. Karl has served on the Editorial Board for IEEE Software magazine and as a contributing editor for Software Development magazine. He is a frequent speaker at software conferences and professional society meetings.
Maintaining Your Competitive Advantage: Strategies to Improve Cognition and Learning
The raw material of software development is not a language, an IDE, or a tool-it’s you. How we learn new technology and acquire new skills is key to our careers. Andy will discuss The Dreyfus Model, popularized in his talk Herding Racehorses and Racing Sheep. Learn ways to boost your career by integrating brain modalities, accelerating learning, and managing the torrent.
Andy Hunt is a programmer turned consultant, author, and publisher. He co-authored the best-selling book The Pragmatic Programmer. He is one of the 17 founders of the Agile Alliance, and co-founded the Pragmatic Bookshelf, publishing award-winning and critically acclaimed books for software developers.