“Zero defects is not just a slogan that you pay lip service to in the attempt to achieve a surrogate goal of few defects. Zero defects is, at least for the individual project team member, a reasonably attainable goal. That doesn’t mean you should expect to deliver entire systems containing tens of thousands of lines of code absolutely without defects. But it does mean that the great majority of modules can be made utterly defect-free; that is, they will be retired after a long productive life, during which they never had need of defect repair. Many, perhaps even most, project workers can expect to deliver zero defect work.”
- Tom DeMarco, Controlling Software Projects.
Archive for October, 2007
Zero Defects
Wednesday, October 3rd, 2007Software Defects and Quality
Monday, October 1st, 2007Here are some quotes on software quality and defects from Controlling Software Projects by Tom DeMarco:
“The first step in trying to develop high-quality software products is to recognize defects for what they are: individual failures to perform.”
“Many so-called enhancements are requirements that always existed, but were not properly elicited by the initial specification process.”
“Defects are not so much a technological as a sociological problem.”
“The real problem is some defective development procedure that allows that defective code to be put in there in the first place.”
“Poor performers are responsible for an order of magnitude more defects than are the best performers; … there are people on almost all projects who insert enough spoilage to exceed the value of their production. Let me state that in its baldest form: Taking a poor performer off your team can often be more productive than adding a good one.”