Let’s suppose that this “label” is an obligation at SoftTopia, so, no software product can be released without that information.
Case A
SoftTopia had implemented that norm since the creation of the first software package, as they already had a quality oriented culture when they were hit by the technological revolution.Case B (ours)
The computer program was created in the 1840s, at SoftTopia. 175 years later, and with millions of software products in use, the SoftTopia leaders released the new quality norm. This is a free commerce society so they only demand the quality label to be placed on each product, but the customer is the one that decides which product to buy. Even though, some industries are regulated because of their impact on the society, like the health sector, hydrocarbons, government, foods, public transportation, civil aviation and defense.What happens next?
• What will the software professionals and businesses not able to create products according to the new norm do?• How will a government institution handle the fact of finding out that almost all of its suppliers deliver software with a quality level below the norm?
• What will do the private sector when their customers realize that a good share of the operational costs is due to poor quality?
• How will the universities and education institutions sell their software engineering syllabus after realizing that their graduates are not able to build software according to the new norm?
Let’s now break the SoftTopia tale
If, little by little, the software professionals and companies from the industry start to publish, voluntarily, the quality level of their products: Will that be Professionalism or Suicide?What do you think? …
The answer is simply "Yes.".
ReplyDeleteAlthough I suspect the actual reaction will be that the quality level criteria will be finagled to allow the most popular products to achieve at least an above-norm rating (likely with no regard to the actual quality nor whether high-quality software by sane metrics will have a high quality level by the standard metrics).
Yes Todd, as with any other human activity, corruption will get in the middle. But when you give the information to the general public things like this http://goo.gl/85WsvI happens. Basically, they have a corruption scheme consisting on using faulty asphalt on roads that need to be replaced yearly, but the normal life spam of the product must be something between 5 to 10 years depending on various conditions. After the intervention they were able to low the city expenditures on asphalt by 27%.
ReplyDeleteI can think of several similar schemes between procurement officers (public and private sector), and software companies / consultants. With the right information institutions can take action, if they want to.