As a product is being made, it can be evaluated from 3 points of view :
- External Quality
- Internal Quality
- Future Quality
External quality is the level to which the product correctly provides the expected services required, whatever how it is coded. This also encompasses speed requirements.
Internal quality is the level to which the product was developed following « good engineering » rules (mostly unspoken). This is very subjective but modularity and separation of concerns are proven engineering principles that can be easily assessed as well as parametrisation and avoidance of copy-paste code as well as naming conventions. Also, use of relevant comments and design documentation belong to this quality. Note that overuse of comments, parameters and modules is a nuisance to be avoided.
Future quality is the level to which the system can be extended in the future with minimal effort. We can then find things like use of open standards, libraries, develoment with tools expected to stand the test of time etc.
Good balance of the 3 qualities is needed to get the product out of the door and to give a sense of pride to the developers. Nobody likes building crap. Even working crap.
Still, External quality is # 1 when time is the limiting factor.
For a system, we have the following triangle :
- Functionality
- Time
- Quality
Out of those three items, some may be fixed from the context in which a given project is done.
If a project must be done for a given date, then time is fixed. Since compromising on quality may do more harm than good, the only solution is to have a Functionality that is not too extensive. Experienced project managers can help a lot here. When a project runs into trouble and the date cannot be moved, the only solution is to reduce functionality. Of course, lots of low quality functionality could be delivered. This is to be measured against a set of values for the company. But I doubt that a customer would be pleased with low quality. The most profitable projects are the one that are billed based on time and material, thus allowing fucntionality and time aspects to be negotiated.
Note :
Beware though that too much quality wishes is also a sin as raising from 90% quality to 100% quality may not be justifiable given the costs that will be incurred. This is also to be managed with a customer.
