http://www.mpdailyfix.com/quality-at-ground-level/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=quality-at-ground-level Opinions. Commentary. News. Sun, 12 Feb 2012 02:23:11 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.1 hourly 1 http://www.mpdailyfix.com/quality-at-ground-level/comment-page-1/#comment-21952 Suzanne Lowe Tue, 15 Aug 2006 03:17:11 +0000 http://www.mpdailyfix.com/quality-at-ground-level/#comment-21952 Brad, you've made some great points (while I was away on vacation; sorry for the delay in responding to you). In fact there are now reports surfacing that the client insisted on cost cutting, cost cutting, cost cutting. You get what you pay for, they say. Brad, you’ve made some great points (while I was away on vacation; sorry for the delay in responding to you). In fact there are now reports surfacing that the client insisted on cost cutting, cost cutting, cost cutting. You get what you pay for, they say.

]]> http://www.mpdailyfix.com/quality-at-ground-level/comment-page-1/#comment-21951 Brad K. Tue, 18 Jul 2006 02:20:13 +0000 http://www.mpdailyfix.com/quality-at-ground-level/#comment-21951 Suzanne, I worked in scientific software engineering for 17 years. You cannot have a quality product if the customer isn't interested. On a couple of projects my company should have refused the work because of weaknesses in the contract. Bad quality is often the result, along with cost over-runs, and years of delay getting an eventual version the meets expectation for quality and function. Many government customers expected that, and companies competed for the work knowing what low-quality work does to damage their work force. So when you start trying to improve quality, you have to have your company involved from procurement through CEO through marketing. Oh, and the engineers and other developers, too. Let an over-eager salesman claim 'we can do that' when it doesn't mean the best product, and everyone loses. Supervisory and executive management have to be on board or someone will gut quality to make some contradictory goal (either knowing or ignorant of the consequences). If the Big Dig was such crap that everyone looked bad, then the only common factor was the customer. My experience is that when the customer decides to limit quality, no one gets to do a workmanlike job. What I am seeing is demogoguery to deflect criticism and built personal careers in the DA office. Suzanne,
I worked in scientific software engineering for 17 years.
You cannot have a quality product if the customer isn’t interested. On a couple of projects my company should have refused the work because of weaknesses in the contract. Bad quality is often the result, along with cost over-runs, and years of delay getting an eventual version the meets expectation for quality and function. Many government customers expected that, and companies competed for the work knowing what low-quality work does to damage their work force.
So when you start trying to improve quality, you have to have your company involved from procurement through CEO through marketing. Oh, and the engineers and other developers, too. Let an over-eager salesman claim ‘we can do that’ when it doesn’t mean the best product, and everyone loses. Supervisory and executive management have to be on board or someone will gut quality to make some contradictory goal (either knowing or ignorant of the consequences).
If the Big Dig was such crap that everyone looked bad, then the only common factor was the customer. My experience is that when the customer decides to limit quality, no one gets to do a workmanlike job.
What I am seeing is demogoguery to deflect criticism and built personal careers in the DA office.

]]>