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How much does poor software quality cost? Try $60 Billion
The BPM forum announced last week the formation of a new Software Economics Council. With exciting news like that, it's a wonder we can all sleep at night. I won't bore you with the details, read the press release if you want the whole shebang. But they estimate poor software quality is costing the industry $60 Billion per year. That number seems a little low to me, I would imagine because they're only counting downtime due to application bugs. Let's look at this honestly and see just how much money is sitting on the table, shall we?
This will take several posts, so I'm not biting off the whole enchilada on this one. Let's just list some ways poor software quality can impact productivity.
1) Software not built according to user's needs. For example, what do you use MS Word for? If you're like most, probably writing letters and reports. But have you ever seen all of the stuff that Microsoft Word can do? That thing could launch nuclear missiles if you knew the right buttons to click. And while there have been many reports in which I've wanted to launch missiles while writing, it's not something that the average user needs. Do a few things. Do them the best possible. Then move on. But instead it's write program, and then keep adding features and baubles to sell new versions every year. That's not in the interest of the consumer.
2) Nobody knows what quality is. "Quality" is like beauty: I know it when I see it. It's highly dependent on the observer, the tests run, and the application. My writing a widget to calculate Pokemon derivatives is not on the same par as space shuttle code. And even the space shuttle: do you need the same precision in the guidance system as you would, say, in the astronaut's appointment books? I know I'm asking for an argument here, but the point is that quality is a self-determined thing. Organizations have to figure it out and define it for themselves.
3) What about poor usability? That's not a bug. Going back to the Microsoft examples, (no offense MS, I'm a MS programmer and love the products. But because I know them so well, you guys are the best examples I can use) many times I've spent hours trying to get my system to do something, only to find that all I had to do was click a little checkbox to get it to do it. The problem was finding that silly checkbox. Even worse than the system not working is the system working and making you feel like a dummy when you can't make it do your will.
I'm sure there's a lot more. These are just the ones that come to mind first.
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