Deming and the quality of software development

Business Horizons, Nov-Dec, 1997 by M. R. Yilmaz, Sangit Chatterjee

A good grasp of Deming's philosophy can facilitate the continuous improvement of software quality.

For several years now, one of the fastest growing segments of the U.S. economy has been the software industry. This includes general-purpose software vendors, customized software developers, and specialized organizations such as NASA and the military. According to a survey of the industry conducted by the Economist in May 1996, annual revenues exceeded $200 billion with a growth rate of some 13 percent, dwarfing the growth rate for the rest of the economy. Already a significant component of the GDP, rapid growth in software production is expected to continue into the foreseeable future. It is one of the key industries of the future, says Thurow (1992), and the United States is the global leader in terms of both production and research and development.

Partly because it is young but growing well, and partly because it has special characteristics that set it apart from other industries, the software industry has not yet been profoundly affected by the "quality revolution" that has swept manufacturing industries in recent decades. This is a rather striking observation because, as noted by W. Edwards Deming, a pioneer of the revolution, companies that are currently doing well are in a favorable position to improve quality. These companies, he said, also have the greatest obligation to improve if they wish to maintain their good fortune. According to Niederman et al. (1991), quality has become an integral aspect of software development, and its importance is likely to increase as competition intensifies. It is safe to say that quality will be the basic success factor for software producers as the industry continues to mature globally.

The volume of software production offshore has also been increasing exponentially in recent years. This is fueled partly by a shortage of software engineers and programmers in the United States, and partly by other developing countries, such as India, that are leading the way in becoming low-cost suppliers of software. Because of rapid improvements in global telecommunications, particularly the expansion of the Internet, geographical boundaries that once protected U.S. and other Western workers are losing their importance. "Global village" is no longer a fancy term because the software development market is readily accessible worldwide--indeed, to a much greater extent than hardware development. Unlike hardware, which is mostly generic (chips are chips, unless they come from potatoes), software is specific to human resources both in production and usage. And Deming's insight into managing human resources is as refreshing and important today as it was when first espoused.

Although a specific definition of software quality is elusive, it is ultimately associated with the extent to which software satisfies its users. This goes beyond the prerequisite of meeting user requirements and into such criteria as ease of learning, ease of use, enjoyment of use, and so on. These factors will continue to gain sway as software use becomes an ever larger part of the daily activities of most people, regardless of their occupations. It is not enough for a software product to be of high quality to succeed in the marketplace; it must satisfy its users to a greater extent than other alternatives.

The core philosophy of total quality management (TQM) is that products or services will become better and cheaper if user demands are continually analyzed and development and production processes are improved accordingly. By tracking and analyzing data from users and from R&D and production processes, a software producer will be better able to improve the methods and procedures of creating the final product delivered to users. Businesses should therefore focus on determining what the customers like or do not like about the products or services, devising measures for monitoring them, and using feedback from these measures for continually improving the processes.

To use a metaphor from Negroponte (1996), the industrial revolution was about moving atoms while the computer revolution is about moving bits. Possessing material resources such as steel or chlorine, which are important inputs into many physical production processes, does not provide comparative advantage in this era of the information revolution. The computer, the new equalizer, has succeeded in creating a global software market--a phenomenon that Adam Smith had envisioned for all goods and services in the Wealth of Nations, but which was not realized for centuries. Unlike physical production, the primary input for software development is human knowledge and brain power; it is especially important how we treat this resource. Deming's philosophy of quality involves thinking of workers from a "human, the psychological being" orientation. And his views are particularly relevant to software development.

The Software Development Process

It is axiomatic that understanding the processes of software development is crucial to managing them properly. Just four decades ago, the industry did not even exist; software development was in an embryonic stage. Each R&D effort was a unique adventure. Today the industry has matured to the point at which it is possible to describe the development processes in terms of general features, even though the details vary from software to software and from company to company.