At SoftTopia each software product, from the smallest utility to the large enterprise application, has a Quality Label. That label indicates the product’s quality for the given release, both internally and externally. The external measure indicates how close to the original functional requirements is the final product. The internal measure indicates how easy is to keep the product alive over time, keeping it within the time and cost boundaries set by all stakeholders (maintainers, customers, owners, etc.).
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? …
Imagine that the Gods of Code gave you a magic wand*. This impressive tool allows you to instantly analyze a code base and give a score from 0 to 10 about its maintainability; where zero (0) means impossible to change, and then (10) really easy to change.
Suddenly, you receive three consulting proposals from distinct clients (A, B, and C). They are requesting you to implement some new features in their flag-ship product. Using your magic wand, you determine that:
- Product A has a maintainability index of 6,
- Product B has one of 1.5, and
- Product C has a maintainability index of 9
Your potential clients have stated that their product is mission critical and that the impact of introducing new defects (bugs) to that product can be catastrophic. Because of that they will transfer that risk to you: any new bug found during a two-month certification period need to be fixed ASAP and without any additional payment.
Assuming a pricing strategy X (time based, effort based, etc.), can we
- Charge Client C the regular rate?
- Charge Client A the regular rate adjusted (multiplied) by some risk based factor (inversely proportional to the maintainability index)?
- Just drop client B and avoid that risk?
Do you get where I’m going?
- Can we educate our customers by using a pricing strategy that directly reflects the level of risk and effort we need to put in order to work with their messy piece of code?
- With time, and some hard experiences, will our customer be more vigilant about the quality of their code base, and maybe start demanding more quality for all developers, inside or outside their organization?
* Don’t wait for the Gods, you can use SonarQube, PMD, ReSharper, Checkstyle, and many others.
