Why commit to quality?

Colombia does not have a developed market for software. In most companies the person in charge of buying software is the same person that buys the soap, and buy it using similar criteria.

Quality in software is not understood, and developers have to do not one extra mile, but ten extra miles just to have them accept simple suggestions to avoid petty requirements that will affect significantly the maintainability of huge applications. Most clients haven´t even heard of maintainability as a concept.

You can loose your mind trying to explain the difference between a defect and a change and why you will correct defects but will not implement changes for free. And the concept of controlling changes seems to your client as a bad way to ask for more money.

If complete mess is the rule, why bother implementing a costly maturity model to guaranty quality in processes and products for clients that will not appreciate it and consider it as bureaucracy that increase the cost?

Just because you know maintainable and reusable software will save you money in the log run. Eventually you will move into the maintenance phase or build a similar system and the fact that you can reuse the documents, design or code and make your life easier will be worthy.

A lame excuse

“The written requirements said the system must held 1500 concurrent users, instead of the 7000 we are getting.”

Monday last week, a new governmental web application was deployed: the RUNT (www.runt.com.co). The application, built by a group of Colombian IT firms headed by Heinsohn, will held information of all transport vehicles in the country. All owners of cars and motorcycles have to register to update information regarding the vehicle and owner. A fine up to two minimum monthly wages (about US$430) will be imposed among those that register late.


Monday noon last week, the system was down. The number of users exceeded the capacity of the system and it took all week for the technical team to catch up. Friday, both the software building firms and the Transport Ministry gave a press conference, to explain what happened. Too many people try to enter at once, and they didn’t expected it.

Lame excuse cause the dynamics of building software has changed (like 20 years ago). Technical staff is responsible for validating requirements given by the client, not just follow them blindly. We, the developers, are responsible for the system having the appropriate functional and non functional requirements, for the client knows his/her business, not how to calculate expected concurrent users.

Analysts should go a mile forward, other wise, how can organizations trust software companies to build exactly what they need?