Comments on Abakas: Sufficient Quality

Kurt, see my comment to Joe. You are a customer, a...

2009-11-11T09:08:36.533-05:00

Kurt, see my comment to Joe. You are a customer, as is the developer you work with. Writing an unmantainable ball of goo doesn't meet your developer-customer's needs and will make them insufficiently happy.

Nice post, Catherine

2009-11-11T06:51:32.576-05:00

Nice post, Catherine

Satisfying the customers requirements with no visi...

2009-11-11T03:54:50.209-05:00

Satisfying the customers requirements with no visible defects is simply the baseline, the low bar, its the "given" before we even begin to talk about quality. The bulk of software quality is internal, (often) invisible to the customer, and affects attributes like technical debt, software design, maintainability, the presence of anti-patterns.

A lot of big balls of mud satisfy all requirements without any visible defects. And that is all the customer can be happy with. He doesn't know that it is unmaintainable junk.

Joe, sure, but you're also your own customer. "Cus...

2009-11-10T22:21:48.382-05:00

Joe, sure, but you're also your own customer. "Customer" is more than the end user. It's also you, the developers you work with (maintainable code, anyone), your support team, your sales guys, any regulatory agencies involved, etc.

"Customer" is really "anyone you serve with this product". And it has to be sufficient for all of them - including you.

If I hacked together a buggy piece of garbage, and...

2009-11-10T22:14:44.678-05:00

If I hacked together a buggy piece of garbage, and enough people with really low standards declared they loved the end result ... well, I don't know that I would feel ethically comfortable saying it was of "sufficient quality".

Maybe sufficient to the end-user or customer or client -- but not me.