Do outages have to be the new normal?

Yesterday I was using a testing tool and it had an outage. Today I was automating a test when a third party had an outage and delayed my test automation. Even the third party’s Status page was not functioning. Social media was full of people complaining about the outage. Outages impacted two consecutive days of my work. This made me wonder if outages are the new normal. The following day my news feeds were full of a story of a bank whose customers could not access their accounts due to an outage.

What has happened to software quality? Companies are under pressure to cut costs and so they improve productivity. Some companies have cut their QA function. 

The objective of a strategy to improve productivity is to improve productivity which does not, in itself, improve quality. After changes to improve productivity, what percentage of changes to production or released to users result in degraded service?

Improving quality creates a chain reaction that improves productivity[1]. If quality improves there are fewer bugs and outages to be fixed. If fewer bugs and outages are being fixed, productivity improves and new features can be added more quickly. If more new features are being added, and less time is spent fixing bugs, then each new feature costs less. If you can add features at a lower cost, you can capture the market.

W. Edwards Deming used improving quality as a strategy to help rebuild the Japanese economy after World War Two and later to make Ford the most profitable car manufacturer in America[2]. 

Improving quality is a proven business strategy which also improves productivity. “Improvement of quality begets naturally and inevitably improvement of productivity”[3]. Outages should not be the new normal for your customers if your company’s strategy is to improve quality (and your company’s productivity will improve too).

Testing professionals can help companies strategies to improve quality because they know how to:

• build quality in by:
  • using techniques like decision tables and boundary value analysis to design tests.
  • using exploratory testing to find issues before your customers find them.
  • testing early in the development process for example, by asking questions that find problems before the code is written.
  • using techniques like the Five Whys and Ishikawa diagrams to find the cause of failures.
  • develop automated tests.
• develop strategies to improve quality by:
  • identifying risks.
  • using statistical analysis to understand quality.
  • bringing customers’ experiences into the testing and development process.
  • working across departments.
• And much more

Testing professionals can help you improve quality, which creates a chain reaction that improves productivity. Outages do not have to be the new normal.

References

[1] Out of the Crisis by W. Edwards Deming (1986, p1)

[2] Deming’s Journey to Profound Knowledge by John “Botchaglaupe” Willis with Derek Lewis (2023, p133)

[3] Out of the Crisis by W. Edwards Deming (1986, p2)