1.2. Pressures on Quality

Because of the elusive nature of quality, it is easily dispensed with under pressure. Once the basic necessities of a product are satisfied, there is always a desire to push the product out the door. Being a practitioner, I am occasionally guilty of this indulgence. “It does the job, so let it pass—we'll fix the rest later on.” This attitude results in the concept of “good enough software,” described as early as a decade ago by Ed Yourdon in The Rise and Resurrection of the American Programmer [1998].

However, if we understand from the beginning the kinds of pressure that quality is subjected to, it will help us plan a product's release with full knowledge of which functionalities are available and which are not. We ...

Get Process Quality Assurance for UML-Based Projects now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.