Story: Everyone's liable to make mistakes

Posted by: David G. Miller (Saturday 15 October 2005, 4:49 AM)

I've been in software development for over 25 years. I've been doing software QA for the last five years. Defects are controllable and are strictly a matter of how the development organization decides to do things. Software quality is a business decision as much as deciding what color the packaging for the product should be.

The company who develops the software is the only entity that is in a position to decide whether to put into place the development processes that will yield fewer bugs or to slam something out to meet a competitor's release. The development company should be held fully accountable for their product. Only the company profits by putting less effort into developing the product. Holding the developer accountable makes as much sense as holding the assembly line guy who happened to be working the day a "defective" tire was produced accountable for an accident.