Episode 086 – Software Quality vs Grade - a podcast by The 6 Figure Developer

 

This week we talk about Software Quality vs Grade.



Definition of Quality

PMBOK V.5 - “Quality is the degree to which a set of inherent characteristics fulfills requirements”



PMBOK: Project Management Body of Knowlege





ISO 9000:2015 - “Quality is the totality of features and characteristics of a product or service that bear on its ablility to satisfy stated or implied needs.”



ISO: International Standards Organization (International Organization for Standardization)





Put Simply - Quality is the fulfillment of the requirements.

Definition of Grade

PMBOK V.5 - “Grade is a category or rank used to distinguish items that have the same functional use but do not share the same requirements for quality.”

Put Simply - Grade ranks items by the strictests set of requirements they fulfill

How does this Apply to Software?Softare Quality (in terms of meeting requirements) is a pass failCompare to Chemical Engineering

Produced Various Grade’s of Polymers

Any product could be in-spec (within specifications) or out-of-spec(outside specifications) of a given set of requrements

Across Chemical companies, the process for creating production vary significally regardless if they are producing the same grade of product (the end user is generally uneffected)

The processes themselves are measure and can be certified to meet certain specifications.

Stop Conflating the Source Code with the Product

Software specifcations are (should) be written from the funtionality value that is provided to the user.

Software should be evaluated according to the fullfillment of those requirements.

We cannot ignore the process of creating, maintaining and changing software

Two sets of Requirements

Software Product Requirements

Software Process Requirements

Gold Plating

Gold plating is simply meeting additional software product requirements that are not in scope

We need to stop gold plating, if the changes are needed there needs to be a change of scope

Gold plating is not following architentual and devleopment choices to ensure proper software process requirements are met



Where does logging fit in?





Technical Debt



Should be only 2 kinds of Techincal Debt but…



Intentional



Choose to leave a software process requirement unfullfilled, in order to fulfill a product requirement more quickly, cheaply, etc





Discovered



Fulfillment and specification of software process requirements, create additional burden in order to fulfill a softare product requirement





(Unfortunate Third) Unintentional



Poor fullilment of software process requirements either because of lack of understanding, specification, or negligence

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