On Getting Management Interested in Improving Quality?

npoole asks: "Like many of the Slashdot readers, I am a programmer and have been pushing out repetitive database content for about a year. The work simply doesn't stop and the more we get it seems the less we ensure quality work. I have been debating telling my boss that either we take less clients, less money, more quality work or I am leaving. Is this a smart thing to do? I'm making very good money doing quick hacks to push out websites, but it's not very project oriented as much as it's become 'throw in pre-written, pre-used functions'. Any advice on how to ensure quality in our work without telling my boss it's either my way or the highway?" Of course, improved quality in any product affects the bottom line, and it's the bottom line that managers are paid to keep up. How can a developer communicate to managers (both open and closed) the value of better quality in development, and how long should one try before giving up?

Comments

Quality... for who?

[OblongPlatypus]

Sounds like npoole wants to change the quality of his workday, not necessarily the quality of the software he produces. While I'm sure we programmers can sympathize, I think he'll have problems getting the point across to management.

Re:Quality... for who?

[jedwards]

change the quality of his workday, not necessarily the quality of the software

They can be very much related - apart from the "pride in work" factor, it tends to be more fun to add functionality to well maintained, high quality code than it is to fix bugs in crappy code under the pressure of customers demanding fix after fix after fix.

Re:Quality... for who?

[EvlPenguin]

Sounds like npoole wants to change the quality of his workday, not necessarily the quality of the software he produces.

They're one in the same. I know from personal experience that if I'm not motivated by anything more than just getting the job done, then I won't produce the same quality code that I would have under favorable circumstances. Not due to time constraints, but because there's no motivation for me to do anything more than the bare minimum. This is why I'm a programmer and not just another corprate slob; because I take pride in my work, but that's not possible when you're being treated like a code monkey.

Re-use bad?

[bricriu]

? I'm making very good money doing quick hacks to push out websites, but it's not very project oriented as much as it's become 'throw in pre-written, pre-used functions'

Is this necessarily a hack? I could easily understand how it could be boring (as noted in a post above), but I was under the impression that being able to re-use your code across multiple projects was a Good Thing (tm) -- in order to get them out the door faster, among other benefits. Just because it's a new client shouldn't mean that you should have to re-invent the wheel.

QOS

[buss_error]

I think that I would communicate your concerns a bit less forcefully. Jobs are tight, and it might be a while before you land another. In particular, I always ask former employers if the applicant would be rehired at the old job. If they refuse to answer (or say "no"), it is a red flag to me that the applicant might be a trouble maker or undesireable. Line up another job before you walk out - that is a smart thing to do and will keep food on the table.

I see two things here: One, perhaps the boss is trying to get as much work as possible so that billing can be at a high level. Second, (s)he may have the same QOS concerns you do, but has reasons not to address them at this time.

What ever you choose to do, a calm, reasoned approch is always a better way than a hot-headed, "My way or the highway" attitude. You can leave if it bothers you that much, but don't leave in a huff. It won't do you any good and will cost you later.

profit level is hard to argue against

[devleopard]

Not an impossible task, but you need to consider your approach. As developers, we like clean, pretty code. However, the people that keep us fed like profit. Saying, "I'm a geek, I like it like this" will get you nowhere. Instead, push for quality control - some sort of lifecycle methodology (in which writing code is a small part of the overall process). Point out that 80-90% of the life an application is maintenance, not original development. By pushing for a structured development process (requirements, design, development, QA, deployment) your projects will come out clean and well implemented. Of course, the bottom line is profit - if the "extra" hours to ensure quality can't be translated into billable hours, there's no hope. However, whatever you do, DON'T QUIT. The market is sh** right now. I repeat, the market is sh** right now.

Make the best possible reusable functions

[localroger]

I'm in a similar situation and what I am doing is building a very general-purpose set of handlers which I can use as building blocks for quick & dirty apps. It's more work up front to build modules which are either general-purpose in principle or quickly hackable without a lot of booby traps, but if you keep an eye on your other projects while you're coding the immediate threat you can drastically reduce overall effort while improving both the quality and future extensibility.

Most of what I do doesn't involve databases but networks of terminals (serial, RF, and PC UI) are becoming more and more important to us. I have just defined a general-use flat data structure that allows virtually anything to be related to anything else within the sphere of what we do, without a DB engine and very fast, and with the ability to add virtually any kind of record to an existing set on the fly. It's harder to code this than a fixed-record field for a particular customer's app, but I only have to code it once, and then I can use it for everybody. In the long run, it will clean up a lot of old spaghetti while greasing the path for new jobs.

Re:Bad idea

[jedwards]

You're paid to program, you're not QA.

Quality is the responsibility of everyone. Do you think you can write whatever and however you want and expect the QA department to magically instill quality into the product?

QA assure quality, they don't create it.

Finding the right clients is the real key

[Infonaut]

Unfortunately, the world is not organized around the principle that quality will always win the battle against mediocrity.

For example, Microsoft is the biggest software company in the world specifically because they realized early on that consumers are less interested in getting quality than they are in getting something that meets their perceived needs.

This is an important point, because unfortunately the most important aspects of software quality are usually hidden from the end user. Since most consumers actually do realize that they don't know jack about the inner workings of their software, they elect not to get inovlved in the esoterica of which kernel is more stable or which file system kicks ass.

Let's make the assumption that your company's clients aren't consumers. Let's say they're aerospace engineers. Smart peope. People concerned with quality. But the quality they are most concerned with is the quality of their own work. So their attention is primarily focused on how well the software you build for them will help them create quality aerospace products.

Also, keep in mind that the cash that runs your client's company and your company has to come from somewhere. Cashflow can often be a huge issue for clients. If a client knows that they can spend $50k for something they know they'll get in an imperfect form one month from now, versus $100k for something that they know is more elegant more cost-efficient over the long haul, they may elect to spend the $50k because their short-term financial concerns dictate that they deal with a lower quality solution now if it will give them just enough to do what they need done.

Even if your manager understands that the quality way is better, more likely than not she'd have a tough time convincing the client of that. In fact, in my experience, clients often don't really want to hear about deep quality issues. "Just tell me the tradeoffs, and I'll make the decision" they'll say. They simply don't want to really know the nitty-gritty details. "That's what I hired you for!"

The Bottom Line is money, and if your software is good enough that your clients can make money with it, most of them will vote with their pocketbooks. Most companies simply follow the buck, from quarter to quarter.

One thing you might try is to evaluate your next employer not just on the work conditions and pay, but also on who their clients are. There are companies out there that actually think long-term. An excellent book on the subject, "Built to Last" goes into detail about the characteristics of visionary companies. Yes, it sounds like cheesy business-speak crap, but these guys conducted extensive research, and they avoid easy answers.

Find a company that serves long-term oriented clients, and you may find yourself a lot happier.

Make them on your own time ... on SF

[Skapare]

The problem could be that it takes time to build this kind of good, flexible, reusable, modular components. I've done the same thing myself. But rarely can this be done on employers time (who do you bill for the time ... when there's enough work to keep everyone busy). One might try to argue to management that if they spend a couple weeks putting together some slick modular tools, that over the course of the next few months it will pay back well with even faster deliverables. But when business is rolling in and customers are saying "the other company promised it in 3 days, but if you can deliver it in 2 days, you've got the deal" then management is loath to pay people for what to them seems risky. The answer may be to put together those tools on your own time, put them on some not-well-announced project on sourceforge using a "pen name" as the owner, then come to management one day and say "Hey look what I found, I think we can use this and speed up our work. We should try this out before anyone else discovers it". And the fact that it is already out there on sourceforge would prevent them from trying to take ownership of work done on your own time.

Get creative

[Stephen Samuel]

Rather than coming at the situation from the point of complaint, come at it from the point of solution. Look for ways that you can liven up your work day, AND make the company more productive (profitable).

As an example:
If your work is repetetive, this indicates to me that there is room to automate parts of it. You might talk to your boses about setting aside 10% of your time to improving the website creation software. This could make your work time more interesting and make the company more profitable.. a win all the way 'round.

What's possible is only limited by your imagination. Just remember that the easier you make the change for your management, the more likely that they'll agree to it.

Re:This is the way the world works....

[Skapare]

This is one of the reasons I refuse to do work as a developer in most cases. My professional work is systems and network administration, although my 2 decades of programming does (except in the last few months) get me plenty of calls to come interview for some programming job. Right now I have enough cash and contract work to hang on for the next 2 to 3 years, so I'm working on developing something for my own business idea. Interestingly, while I thought I'd have plenty of time to do it right, I even feel my own pressure to get it done and get it to market sooner. That is a fact of life. The concept of getting things to market sooner really is valid from a business perspective, despite how much the geek in me says that's crap. At least during the economic downturn, it's less likely that competitors are doing as much that will compete against me, so I can take a little time to get this done right.

Be careful what you wish for

[Prong]

First off, I highly recommend not giving your mananger the "my way or the highway" speech. Even in a good job market, it would be considred a CLM. Right now you'd be better off withdrawing 2 to 3 months worth of income and pitching it off the nearest bridge than getting in management's face.

I'm not sure what code reuse has to do with poor product quaility, unless the modules themselves are broken somehow. What you've described really sounds like a development manager's wet dream. Drop-in, pretested modules with a minimal amount of modification? That's the holy grail of the coders-as-cogs management mentality! If the customers themselves aren't complaining about quality, I doubt management is going to give a hoot what the rank and file thinks.

If you really insist on pushing this, I've got a few pointers for you:

• Send a polite e-mail asking for some time to discuss some concerns. Don't go into to too much detail, and keep a copy for yourself.
• Prepare a written document on exactly what your concerns are, and exactly why you believe these to be problems for either your customers or your company
• It's best if you can quantify the impact (x numbers of customers lost, y dollars in revenue gone), but you need to at least show a solid link between your issues and valid potential consequences.
• Be as professional and calm as possible. Going on about how stupid something or someone is doesn't impress management types, and probably gets your issues routed to the circular file pretty quickly.
• If all else fails, start looking for that new position quietly!. Getting the boot before you've gotten something else lined up is expensive and foolish if you've got the option of keeping your current gig until the next thing comes along.

Best case, management addresses your issues, and you look like a "team player". Worst case, they drop kick your arse out without even giving you a listen. The outcome depends on how you play your cards.

Go Between the Horns

[MarkOShark]

You don't have to accept poor quality or leave your job. What you need is a strategy to drive an increase in quality.

There is a trilogy of dimensions at the core of the issue: cost, time and quality. Every organisation needs to balance these. The management of your organisation, like most I have worked in, don't understand the quality issue in relation to software because it is more subjective than the other two dimensions and therefore it doesn't get the emphasis it deserves.

From the little I know about your situation, here is my take on what you need to do:

1. You need to understand the impact that the reduced quality has. Is this manifested by significant complaints from the user community; is it manifested by users switching to an alternative product:? Understanding this is important because it will become the business driver for the change you want. If you can't demonstrate that the reduced quality has an impact that matters, you won't be able to influence anyone.
   
2. Find other people in your organisation that believe that quality is also a core issue, and preferably not just from the software development team. e.g. Documentors, help desk staff, testers. Most importantly, if you can find articulate users who can reiterate your claim of poor quality, this is good.
   
3. You need to identify tangible steps that will increase the quality. You can't just say you need more time to develop because this doesn't demonstrate that the quality will improve; you might just spend more time making nicer interfaces. You need to say things like: we need to add an additional 1 hour of stress testing for every 3 hours of programming; we need to add a step in the project plan for users to acceptance test the product and allow 2 days (for arguments sake) for changes as a result of this; (insert you ideas here!)
   
4. You need to make a business case to your management. This doesn't need to be a fancy piece of work, but it does need a punchy argument so that the management will look at it and reach the conclusion that the quality issue is having an impact on the organisation. The angle you need to take will vary on your organisation and the people you are trying to influence. In a small business, the management are probably more focussed on basic objectives (e.g. profit, revenue). Larger organisations may include more complex factors such as market positioning, compliance to standards or legal requirements etc.
   But the basic form of the business case is:
   
   • This is the problem and it's impact [on whatever matters, usually $]
     
   • Here are steps that will rectify the problem and the costs for these steps
     
   • Here is how we will measure that the steps have increased the quality
     
   • Here is the business benefit that will be achieved (and here is the kudos you'll get from your peers/clients)
     
   
   

Another way of saying the same thing is:

• The only way to get the change you want is to influence the people who make the decisions on how much resource (money, people) are involved on something.
  
• You need to prove to these people that quality is important and your product doesn't have enough of it.
  
• If the quality is improved, it has the effect of improving of whatever is important to them.
  

If you have other people who have the same focus as you, pool your talents and resources together.

If you want this change and it's important to you (which it sounds like), then you need to put in some work to make the change. Don't make an ultimatum because it's an employer's market - they can just take you up on it and that won't help anyone, especially you.

Remember, anyone can be influenced if you can show them that what you want makes it better for them too.

I hope this is in any way helpful. I have had similar battles myself and still do, but life is always slowly improving!

Mark

Define "quality" first!

[Philbert Desenex]

Define "quality" before trying to make "quality" code. "Quality" doesn't mean one single thing. It can and does mean different things to different people. I've seen people use "conformance to spec", "fully documented", "feature rich", "crashproof", "fast", "easy to use", "surprising", "first to market", "bug-free" as all or part of what "quality" means.

Figure out what you mean by "quality", then find out what your boss means by "quality". You may be talking across each other. You might want to look at Gerald M Weinberg's Quality Software Management for a better discussion of the meaning of "quality". I'm not sure about the rest of the book, but the section on what "quality" means is relevant.

My other advice: ignore consultants and companies who peddle a Process (a process to reach SEI CMM level 5, or ISO 9000 status, for example) as a means to acheive "quality". They often leave "quality" undefined or vaguely defined because then they get to use opposing meanings as convenient. When convincing programmers to use The Process, quality consultants will use "bug free" or "speed to market" as the implied meaning of quality. When talking to managers, they use "feature rich", "on schedule" or "completely documented" as the implied meaning of quality. When talking to corporate leadership, the use "cheap", "speed to market" as meanings. Often, some tension exists between various definitions of "quality". "Cheap" often opposes "bug free" or "fully documented". "Feature rich" can oppose "high performance". "Speed to market" can oppose "fully documented". You get the picture.

Horse shit masquerading as horse sense - was Re:As

[samantha]

The day I have to "be thankful to have a job at all" and not speak my very experienced and bright mind as I see fit is the day I stop programming for a living. I wouldn't be worth a damn without being able to speak up and actually make a difference.

Not taking a stand, if done by enough employees, guarantees that your job, or even your entire company will be the one with its head on the block next.

Not caring about quality because your company doesn't is a most excellent way to hate your work and lose your spark utterly. Don't do it. The paycheck isn't worth what that will do to you if you take such advise. I know what I am talking about.

The problem is managers with little tech knowledge

[Futurepower(tm)]

'As a rule, I will *never* work for any organization where project management is in the hands of people who are not technically current.'

By far, the biggest problems in technically-oriented companies are the non-technically-oriented managers. They are generally making far more money than they would at a non-technical company. They are willing to do anything to keep their jobs, including making life miserable for everyone else.

The best acting I have ever seen was not in a Hollywood movie. The best acting I have ever seen was by a manager trying to make everyone believe that he could manage without thorough understanding.

When they sink their companies, they are generally able to get another job, because the people who hire them are faking it, too.

The dot-coms failed because they hired good actors and not knowledgeable people. The dot-coms did not fail because of highly complex situations that could not be understood in advance. They failed because they did extremely foolish things.

The use of non-technical managers will continue as long as there are investors who will put money into something they don't understand.

Ever heard of design?

[roguerez]

I'm making very good money doing quick hacks to push out websites, but it's not very project oriented as much as it's become 'throw in pre-written, pre-used functions'.

Dude, trowing out pre-written, pre-used functions is what good software engineering is about. That's the whole point of good design, preventing you from having to re-invent the wheel every time.

If you're getting bored, try to get higher up the design hierarchy instead of sticking in your lowly code production job.

It's a hack when you have to write from scratch essentially the same thing again and again. NOT when your are re-using stuff. Get with the program.

Use the right language

[ebbe11]

In order to get through to management, you have to talk their language. And that language is:

Money.

Let's face it: If you talk technical details most managers will get that blank stare after a while. Either they don't understand what you are talking about or they are not interested, probably both.

But if you can show them how to save money on the bottom line, they will listen to you. And yes, you can boil it down to money. Better code means less time spent on correcting errors, time which most likely is not billable. If that time (a.k.a. cost) can be removed or better yet converted to billable time, it will affect the bottom line positively.

So in order to be allowed to make better quality, you have to calculate how much it will save on the bottom line.

Also, be honest and don't oversell your stuff. You may think that what you propose will earn say a 20% saving. Tell your manager that the saving will be at most 10%. Why? Because you will most likely run into snags and teething troubles that will diminish the initial savings. And if you don't, well, performing better than promised is usually not a sin.

Re:The customer doesn't CARE

[beanerspace]

I couldn't agree more. I remember back in grad school (a million years ago), we had a dreamy-eyed project management professor who got all bent out of shape because I delivered my analysis of a 'case study' affixed inside of a (clean) pizza box.

The point was to emphasize that when a pizza is delivered to my house, I don't care if it was cooked in a Vulcan or Middlebe-Marby oven, if they used X or Y management style or if they were driven by this factor or not.

All I care about is that if the local manufacturer of circular pseudo-Italian cuisine:

delivered it fast enough;

delivered it as specified;

wasn't stuck to the top of the box;

didn't taste like the top of the box.

I mean if I wanted "quality" Italian, then I'd get dressed up, take the wife downtown, spend some time and some bucks ... yet amazingly enough, even in those cases, I didn't give a fig about how the restaurant was managed.

Develop a product centre

[James Youngman]

(I think that) you want:

• To write quality code
  
• Not to have to maintain rubbish code
  
• To avoid reinventing shoddy wheels
  
• To feel like you are moving forward, not firefighting all the time
  

Your boss wants :-

• Happy clients
  
• Good reference stories of previous successes
  
• To reduce the risks to projects (i.e. reduce risk of non delivery or late delivery)
  
• To maximise the rate of return business
  
• To maximise the profit made on each delivery (i.e reduce the effort of turning out another project)
  
• To reduce the dependency of the business on skills held by individuals, in favour of skills held jointly among the team
  

The trick is to find an approach which fulfils both these sets of goals. Several exist, but the most obvious one is to work over the course of several projects to turn what you have (which you say are all very similar) into an actual product. This means

• You get to work on the same set of code, and improve and refine it over time
  
• To reduce the number of bugs, over time
  
• To to reinvent the wheel, since you have a working wheel already
  
• To feel like you are making progress, because you don't start from scratch every time
  

Your boss gets :-

• To be able to deliver repeatably successful systems
  
• Clients who are happy because not starting from scratch every time means fewer bugs
  
• Rediced delivery effort, because delivery projects are customisations of your product(s), not bespoke work
  
• Better rates of return, because you have reduced the effort required to deliver a solution, without reducing the value to the client of the delivered solution
  
• No reliance on knowledge held by just one person, becase the whole team will understand (significant parts of) the product
  

In addition you both get

• Documentation
  
• Less bugs
  
• Promoted
  

To successfully sell this to your management you will need to be able to demonstrate that this can be done off the backof your regular project stream, and does not have to mean that some guy gets to sit in a corner contemplating his navel "writing the product" for a year. You will never sell that to your boss. Instead, devise a plan where you use the code for project A, and generalise it a bit and add customisations to support project B. By the time you have delivered C and D as well, what you have is a product.

To make this work, you will have to retain the IP on the software you write, which I guess you don't at the moment.

The best way round this is to tell the clients explicitly that they are getting a product (clients often like products because it means that the project delivery risk is reduced).

But the client will refise to allow themselves to be marooned without support. Hence you do a deal with them whereby they get a non-exclusive license to modify the code which is transferrable if the business is bought or sold. You can also tell them that this means that they are free to seek support for your code from elsewhere (but that they cannot sell the code on). They may well like this (it has several good features, e.g. insulating them from risk of your company folding). Your support agreement will need to be clear on the fact that you won't support the code if they have just hacked upon it madly.

In short: develop a strategy that benefity you, your boss and your clients, and think about hoe to sell it to all three.