What is quality?

This is my favourite question when meeting people for the first time.

For some people it is about the software doing what it is meant to do. It might be robustness & reliability or adherence to specifications. Other people spoke about the value and solving customer problems. Is it useful? Some people referred to the swishness & polish plus the experience of it.

I like to represent these as the three pillars of quality.

I think this is really interesting to share and convey because within software we often overly focus on correctness as a measure of quality.

Let’s consider this with an example other than software… food!

When I am going out for a meal, what I want is to be fed & getting nutritional value. If I come away from a meal out feeling hungry, I really won’t feel like my user needs have been met. It was lacking value. This has happened with a fine dining meal where sure, it was fancy but I got a snack as soon as I got home. The meal wasn’t quality.

However if I go to a fast food place, maybe it will fill me up, but it is hardly the greatest experience as there’s possibly screaming kids, the food is… fine… and . This is why despite being correctly cooked and filling me up, I wouldn’t describe it as quality.

Finally if I eat a meal but it hasn’t been correctly cooked then I am highly unlikely to regard it as quality. For example when a thai meal had way too much 5 spice, it wasn’t quality. When my dirty fries made my body crash (vomit), it wasn’t quality.

However it isn’t essential to achieve high levels in all of these.

I will still enjoy my fast food because it fills my needs and I can have confidence it won’t make me ill. I will sometimes eat food knowing it won’t meet my nutritional needs… but it will be gooooood too eat. However my red line would be correctness. Or at least aspects of it (don’t make me feel ill!).

It is important to know what matters to you and your customers. For the past 14+ years I’ve worked in an industry when we didn’t care about excellence. Our customers wanted value and correctness.

Similarly some customers will be happy with a lack of excellence and correctness because they are so happy that their problems are being solved.

However a word of caution. Building off one core pillar isn’t without risks. Even two pillars isn’t without risks. When a core pillar crumbles or the focus changes for the customer, suddenly your perceived quality will tumble.

So in summary:

• Quality is more than correctness. Excellence and Value are essential to think about.
• Think about what matters most to your customers.
• But don’t forget about the other pillars.

Side note: I originally started using this referring to it as Dan Ashby’s Three Pillars of Quality… but he never mentioned it. I’m now thinking that I took a concept from one of his (many amazing) talks and adjusted it into the pillars. If I stole this from someone, I’m sorry and please let me know!