The Practical Guide to Defect Prevention

Organizational Considerations

Organizations must realistically assess their level of commitment to and expectations of the defect prevention process. For example, many organizations want to achieve very low defect rates like those of the NASA Space Shuttle program and the airline industry but resist the investment, effort, and engineering rigor required to achieve such a high level of reliability and performance. Other organizations want to eliminate defects by just putting “three smart people in a room” to discuss an issue and quickly devise ways to resolve it. Unfortunately, although the brainstorming approach is quick, requires minimal effort, and can be moderately effective, it typically isn’t very thorough.

At the other end of the spectrum ...