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What is software quality? What is eligible software?
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Does the software we develop meet stakeholder needs?
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Is it easy to use? is it safe? Is it reliable? Is it easy to maintain? Is it easy to expand?
For any organization, it is important to answer questions like this .
While we know that software companies often operate on a vague, approximate notion of quality, and tolerate flaws that most engineering disciplines cannot tolerate.
However, product quality also reflects the research and development process behind the product. A high-quality R&D process can save the development organization from the time of rework and iterative design/code modification .
If the entire company and the entire team reach a consistent and correct understanding of software quality and quality management, they will have more time to think about how to increase product value and focus on quality details, promote innovation and develop creative features , Only by delivering good quality products can we minimize waste and improve R&D efficiency.
In the process of software development, everyone often pays attention to the progress and delivery speed, and often ignores the quality . If you improve quality, it is easy to be challenged and tortured. In addition to quality three questions : who is the quality (what)? Where does the quality come from? Where to go? Quality management also encountered five tortures. Let's answer the five soul tortures from quality management.
1. What is the value of quality?
It is not enough to think that quality is important, the value of quality must be recognized. If the value of quality is not recognized, quality will be ignored over time.
Where is the value of quality? The most obvious value is to make users like to use your products and services. Because the higher the quality, the happier the customer. If customers like your product, they will be willing to spend money to buy it, and form a good word-of-mouth, one spread ten, ten spread, ... bring more customers, so good quality, it will bring customers and the company profit and improve the competitiveness of the company .
Good quality can also reflect the difference between your company and other companies , and bring you a high profit margin. The iPhone produced by Apple is a typical example. Since 2010, Apple's share of global smartphone profits has increased from 40+% to 92% in 2015, which is unimaginable.
The role of quality management is to find profits for the enterprise and enable the enterprise to survive better. Moreover, when the software development process and its products are at a high-quality level, it can also increase the speed of product delivery and deployment, so as to better respond to business changes in a timely manner and maintain or improve competitive advantages.
With good quality and higher profits, the pressure on production will not be too great, and the investment in research and development will also increase, which will further promote the innovation of enterprises and employees .
2. How is the value of quality measured?
A study commissioned by the U.S. Department of Commerce's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) found that software defects cost the U.S. economy nearly $60 billion a year. The study also found that approximately 80 percent of software dollars are spent by software developers identifying and correcting defects. In another study, the Standish organization reported that canceled software development projects cost organizations $55 billion annually. Clearly, poor software quality -- and a poor software development process -- is the biggest drain on business profitability .
It is very difficult to measure the value of quality. It is necessary to introduce a concept of "Cost of Poor Quality (COPQ)" , that is, how much a defect will increase the cost of the enterprise. If a requirement defect is not found in the requirement or design, but found to be unrealizable during programming, and then the requirement and design need to be changed, it will cause rework, and the cost of rework belongs to COPQ. If this requirement defect is discovered during system testing, then the requirements, design, and code need to be changed, and retesting will be required, which will bring greater costs. If this demand defect is not found in the test and is missed on the production line, the COPQ will be much larger.
The value of quality can be reflected through the accounting of inferior quality costs . So from this perspective, testing is not a cost center. When the cost invested in testing is lower than COPQ, testing is a profit center, that is, it is cost-effective to ensure that the cost of guarantee is less than the cost of inferior quality.
The cost of poor quality is often compared to the tip of the iceberg, and the unseen loss is much greater! Because the directly visible (accountable) costs are a very small part, there are also a lot of invisible losses: such as brand, lost orders, and being abandoned by customers. Just like the " Weimeng system's vicious database deletion incident " mentioned yesterday , it is not only the loss of stock market value, but also the loss of turnover caused by the inability to improve services for a few days, and a large number of losses (such as loss of credibility, loss of customers, etc.) cannot be calculated.
In order to increase the value of quality and improve the efficiency of management, American quality masters put forward the "zero-defect quality management idea", which is to do things right at the first time , with the lowest cost. Even saying "quality is free" is not what people often think: the higher the quality, the higher the cost of quality assurance. In fact, this is not necessarily the case. R&D personnel are required to do things right once, which will increase the time for planning and thinking before doing it, but the time for subsequent testing and bug correction will be much less, the efficiency will be improved, and the cost will be reduced. Not to improve.
3. How to define quality objectives?
Quality objectives include process quality objectives and delivered product quality objectives. You can focus on the formulation of product quality goals, and drive process quality through product quality goals . The formulation of product quality goals is mainly based on the following quality models, combined with its own specific product characteristics, application scenarios and specific customer needs, and further decomposed into specific quality goals. You can refer to Chapter 14 of "Full Software Testing (3rd Edition)" written by me to formulate.
4. How to connect quality indicators and business indicators?
The success of quality management is ultimately reflected in the business, so quality indicators must be linked to the business, which is why people usually use KPI and OKR to determine the performance evaluation indicators of individuals or teams. Business goals will be decomposed into certain quality indicators, and the best tool is the House of Quality QFD (Quality Function Deployment, Quality Function Deployment).
5. How to do a good job in quality management?
The first is leadership: leadership/management must have correct quality values, such as TQM, zero-defect management, etc., pay attention to quality, and lead quality management work. Secondly, it is the quality awareness and quality culture of the entire organization , just like the "recognition of quality value" mentioned above, which puts quality first, not progress.
Quality management is a systematic project . It manages quality from various aspects such as people and organization, process, method, technology and tools, so as to achieve the management of all employees and the whole process, including quality planning, quality control and quality improvement. The details can be Check out "Software Quality Assurance and Management (2nd Edition)," which will be published next month.
Includes advanced quality management platform
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