After four and a half hours sitting in a meeting about software processes, everyone has a different opinion of what "quality" means.
Some of the perspectives:
- Maintainable code
- Free of bugs
- No customer complaints
- Meets functional specs
- Appeases the project financier
- Fully tested
- Full test coverage
- Doesn't suck
All valid points. All worth considering. Where do you start? At the project beginning? Is the end really too late? Is it the responsibility of the coders? The project manager? The testers? Me (the quality manager)?
The only answer I can feel comfortable with is, Yes. Start at all of them, and everyone is responsible.
Now how do you quantize this, when there are so many smart people who have very strong cases against measuring quality metrics? How do you get management buy-in?
No answers yet, but I am looking hard!
