Joakim’s Reflections CW2328 - Purpose as a means to achieve quality?
New week and more things overheard by the coffee machine.
“First, we ship the features, then we fix the quality.”
Writing software is a complex endeavour and by focusing on quantity you ensure that quality will never come. You will slowly but surely evolve a culture of ticket pushing with little to no regard for outcomes nor value creation. Gall's Law from his book Systemantics: How Systems Really Work and How They Fail, states:
A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work. You must start over with a working simple system.
(Let us explore the aspect of organizational design another time and then also weave in a potential connection to Conway’s Law).
Reading the quote, it may seem if we maintain simplicity in our design we can focus on quantity. However, the quote is preceded by the qualifier "A simple system may or may not work.". Which gets us to the point of quality in software development.
From here we can probably debate the concept of quality and what it means, for the sake of my argument I will claim that a system with the following characteristics is of low quality:
Does not achieve the desired outcome.
Difficult to understand how individual pieces fit together and contribute to the outcome.
Lack feedback mechanisms (metrics).
Inconsistent behaviour.
This list can be made much, much longer but my intention here is to give you a starting point with the above characteristics as control-questions.
To know whether we are achieving the desired outcome, we must understand what that is. Do we have a clear understanding of the goal and purpose?
To easily explain how pieces fit together we must maintain a simple design to the maximum extent possible. Will each individual piece’s success contribute to a higher order success? How?
To be informed whether the system is no longer fit for purpose we must build in measurability. Do we have leading and lagging indicators of system health in place?
Doing the same thing twice must yield the same result. If we are not sure if we did the exact same thing the second time, see no.2.
Purpose as a means to achieve quality.
The statements above indicate that quality, from a business perspective, stems from purpose. That if you have a well-established goal or purpose with proper alignment throughout your organization, individuals will pursue an ever-increasing quality.
If you do not, you must manufacture control mechanisms in an attempt to achieve any notion of quality.