Focusing on High Quality in the Software Development Business

It is not just the customer who benefits from a focus on high quality. The software development businesses also improve from this by becoming more responsive and innovative, increasing competitive difference, and reducing total cost of development. In details study of this is discussed below.

 Responsiveness and innovation

Successful organizations recognize the importance of continuous innovation and differentiation, which require rapid responses to a constantly changing business layout. Software flexibility enables the response, and organizations that hold software development as their core business process quickly move ahead of the pack. However, software's greatest advantages can also make it vulnerable. One small change to one application can introduce a flaw that brings down an entire system. Knowing this, software development teams sometimes assume a "fix-it-later" mentality; they move forward with products they know are defective. No other engineering discipline permits this.

To operate successfully in an on demand world, businesses must keep a laser-like focus on quality while developing and maintaining the software systems they rely on; quality systems are what enable businesses to react, adapt, deploy new solutions quickly, and maintain a competitive edge. [10]

 Differentiator

As a discipline, software development has quality standards far below those of other engineering disciplines. Managers and developers are good at justifying their products' shortcomings. The functionality they offer is "better than nothing" or "better than the former system," they say, and there are manual backups in case the system crashes. But can a structural engineer reason away the collapse of a building in a similar way? Would an aeronautic...

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...consistent staff buy-in, none or limited architectural and code QA, limited post-deployment monitoring and assessment.

But what is the cost of high quality? Expert Philip Crosby insists that quality is free. [13] Ideally, a software development organization would have these characteristics:

 Well defined process with unanimous buy-in from team members.

 Team members, who focus attention on value added features, detail, and quality across the lifecycle.

 Managers, who constantly evaluate end-user feedback to ensure reinvigoration of the product line and satisfied, repeat customers.

Although the intangibles that would make such an organization operate efficiently, good management, effective staffing, consistent process, and so on would require up-front investments in terms of management time, planning, and training, they would not incur additional financial outlays.