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Ask HN: Why is software quality an afterthought for many people/companies?

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Re: Ask HN: Why is software quality an afterthought for many people/companies?

#21

Post by finance-geek »

wyc wrote: post #10

In Peopleware, Tom DeMarco thinks it's because a business's customers will tolerate lower quality software, so there are diminishing marginal returns to revenue as investment in software quality continues. He predicts that while this management style works wonderfully for the bottom line in the short run, it causes long-term ailments such as team dissatisfaction, overly complex architectures, and other issues that ma…

To take this a level higher -- managers are often rewarded on quarterly or annual targets, not long-term targets. When it managed a large software team, it was very difficult to budget time/money for quality -- if I did, peers would swoop in and try to take my position under the guise of "he's overspending for the task." It takes good, strategic prioritization all the way up the management chain to build quality.

Re: Ask HN: Why is software quality an afterthought for many people/companies?

#22

Post by mzagaja »

When it comes to controlling costs, reducing quality is one of the few levers we have. When it comes to developing software the trade-off we're making is usually not whether we make low or high-quality software, but whether we make low quality or no software.

Re: Ask HN: Why is software quality an afterthought for many people/companies?

#23

Post by alok-g »

pjc50 wrote: post #8

Software development is, apart from a few rare outposts like GOV.UK, conducted in the private sector for a profit. That means that the number one consideration for the software is profitability. For internal-only software, this means that cost is the prime consideration. In support of that, often software startups are trying to capture a winner-takes-all market, so time-to-market is critical. Thirdly, consumer protec…

Only thing I can add (indirectly covered in your comment) is that software companies are competing with each other too. So once quality vs. price bar gets set, it is hard for another company to offer a better quality while asking for a higher price. This is one of the reasons how a lot of software has gotten to ad-funded.

Dan Ariely (author of the book Predictably Irrational) called allowing free apps on AppStores to be a mistake made by the industry. The customers have now gotten used to free apps, making it harder for the industry/developers to offer better quality.

Re: Ask HN: Why is software quality an afterthought for many people/companies?

#24

Post by Nursie »

Businesses* don't care about quality until it's too late.

They pay lip service to it, sure, but when it comes down to it most don't care enough until it actually starts to affect the bottom line. And longer, more expensive development processes are already affecting the bottom line, so come on, get it out the door!

Plus a lot of engineers see quality considerations as a drag. If they can find a home in a company that doesn't want all this "extra" stuff done then, well, this is what you get.

There are notable counter-examples in companies - Big Blue has a huge focus on quality, and their teams put a lot of effort into it (note I am saying nothing about usability here...) which is possible because a lot of stuff there moves slowly anyway. It's also because IBM are very, very good at measuring their cashflows and costs and have figured out just how much lack of quality can impact their bottom line.

There are also many individual engineers in smaller companies who put quality up front, and try their damnedest to push it through even where the business may not really care.

( * mostly SMEs are terrible for this, IMHO, though one or two large corporates I've worked with haven't been that great either)

Re: Ask HN: Why is software quality an afterthought for many people/companies?

#25

Post by seren »

larzang wrote: post #16

Clients don't care about quality, they care about features, so management doesn't care about delivering quality, they care about delivering features, so engineers aren't allocated enough time to care about quality, only features. And then it's still the engineers fault when everything explodes or takes 10x longer than it should to rework or expand a feature later. Basically it comes down to management that is willing…

> Clients don't care about quality, they care about features, so management doesn't care about delivering quality

Up to a point, as soon as you start losing market share to competitors because your customer complains your application crashes every other day. Suddenly, the focus switch back to quality. (Until the next cycle).

What is frustrating as engineer is to release something you know you'll have to fix in 6 months after a customer's complaint. But maybe from a sales point of view that was the right decision.

Re: Ask HN: Why is software quality an afterthought for many people/companies?

#26

Post by bpicolo »

jonsen wrote: post #13

Did you ever hear: "I love to code", "Writing code is so much fun" ? Software is not made by grownups. And for the most part the development is not managed by grownups. The problem is that so many can get away with childish behaviour.

"Grownups" can't enjoy their work? Damn.

Re: Ask HN: Why is software quality an afterthought for many people/companies?

#27

Post by joelthelion »

pjc50 wrote: post #8

Software development is, apart from a few rare outposts like GOV.UK, conducted in the private sector for a profit. That means that the number one consideration for the software is profitability. For internal-only software, this means that cost is the prime consideration. In support of that, often software startups are trying to capture a winner-takes-all market, so time-to-market is critical. Thirdly, consumer protec…

> That means that the number one consideration for the software is profitability. For internal-only software, this means that cost is the prime consideration.

> In support of that, often software startups are trying to capture a winner-takes-all market, so time-to-market is critical.

I think we software engineers should embrace this reality, and learn to live with it. Your employer is willing to spend years to develop top-notch quality software? Great, you can employ all the software engineering best practices. That's not the case? Well, we should have a standard approach for gracefully handling strong time constraints without completely giving up on quality.

Re: Ask HN: Why is software quality an afterthought for many people/companies?

#28

Post by xelhark »

If you think about it, software quality is not something that is ever visible or measurable from the outside.

Theoretically, you could write software by just having an incredibly long list of test cases and a random string generator.

The quality of that code would probably be terrible, but it would still work as long as your test cases are restrictive enough.

Re: Ask HN: Why is software quality an afterthought for many people/companies?

#29

Post by notlob »

pjc50 wrote: post #8

Software development is, apart from a few rare outposts like GOV.UK, conducted in the private sector for a profit. That means that the number one consideration for the software is profitability. For internal-only software, this means that cost is the prime consideration. In support of that, often software startups are trying to capture a winner-takes-all market, so time-to-market is critical. Thirdly, consumer protec…

> The Toyota "unintended acceleration" bug revealed some tremendously poor quality software.

Did Toyota ever recall the affected ETCs?

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