Measuring quality beyond the development organization

We’ve spent a lot of time in this chapter talking about quality code from the perspective of software engineering. Software is never developed in a bubble. It is always developed in concert with business professionals working to solve business problems. That means a great many people on your project might not be developers or engineers. All of our discussions so far have revolved around specific engineering practices. However, you need to realize that these views won’t be shared by your business-oriented colleagues.

For them, quality is often defined as conformance to requirements. That means quality code is code that meets its requirements. I would argue that this is a far too basic definition. The corporate quality movements of the 80s and 90s, such as the lean manufacturing and zero defects ideals espoused by Deming, have been coopted into our field by well-meaning managers. They want to focus 100 percent on...