Quality is meeting requirements...

I was at a client site today and I saw one of those yellow diamond signs hanging from a suction cup; but this one didn't say "Baby on board" it said, "Quality is meeting requirements".  This got me to thinking, we all talk about quality, but what does it mean in the real world?  Here are some quotes of some great thinkers

An essential requirement of… products is that they meet the needs of those members of society who will actually use them.  This concept of fitness for use is universal…The popular term for fitness for use is quality, and our basic definition becomes quality means fitness for use. - J. M. Juran

What is quality?  What would someone mean by the quality of a shoe?  Let us suppose that it is a man’s shoe that he is asking about.  Does he mean by good quality that it wears a long time?  Or that it takes a shine well?  That is feels comfortable?  That it is waterproof?  That the price is right in consideration of whatever he considers quality?  Put another way, what quality-characteristics are important to the customer? - Deming

Quality is conformance to requirements - P. Crosby

Quality is the totality of features and characteristics of a product or service that bear on its ability to satisfy stated or implied needs - ISO Definition of Quality

Narrowly interpreted, quality means quality of product...Broadly interpreted, quality means quality of work, quality of service, quality of information, quality of process, quality of division, quality of people, including workers, engineers, managers, and executives, quality of system, quality of company, quality of objectives, etc.  To control quality in its every manifestation is our basic approach - Ishikawa

What each of these quotes attempt to do is to quantify quality as a pass or fail binary system across a range of measures.  In the real world this manifests, most notably, in the form of a metric that attempts to convey an analog process.  What is missing from each of these statements is where is the value to the customer, and how is that measured.  If I buy a sofa for $600 then intrinsically that sofa is worth $600 to me.  If it lasts 2 months I will feel that it is of low quality and I paid too much.  However, the difference between lasting 6 years or 7 years is virtually indistinguishable from a value to me perspective.  At some time period lower there will be a break, but the break isn't a binary one.  Once I've sunk my costs in to the product I have a vested interested in seeing my value out of it.  But where is it, and does it change.  I say it does, it might change with a competing product or to many additional maintenance costs.  This is where traditional quality measures falls short.  There is an analog component to quality and no amount of binary measures can compensate for that quality curve. 

[I do want to point out that at no time do I have to purchase this particular sofa if I do not feel I will get value from it - this is another area where organizations fall short.  It is okay to abandon projects that cannot have their value realized effectively]   

Quality is Dead... Everywhere - The tale of the Christmas present being 1 month late

A few weeks ago James Bach wrote a post about quality being dead. His hypothesis was stated simply as, "a pleasing level of quality for end users has become too hard to achieve while demand for it has simultaneously evaporated and penalties for not achieving it are weak." James even threw out he proverbial "Microsoft releases buggy software" line. His points have merit and this post is not to discuss his points, as I agree with them; especially with respect to the weak penalties for releasing unsatisfactory software. This post is to point out that the phenomenon is not confined to desktop software where end user productivity is impacted, or confined to web based software where eCommerce may be affected. On to my experience...

First, I want to point out that my wife and I have 6 children ranging in age from 14 to 20. I do this because, as James' points out in his Rapid Software Testing approach, "Quality is value to some person (who matters)." In this story I think I should matter, but perhaps my ego is too big.

My wife went to a national clothing retail store, that caters to teens and young adults, located in our city to purchase a green stretchy sweater as Christmas gift for one of our nieces. This is not unlike many people who purchase clothing Christmas gifts for their family members. In any event, the purchase was made a few weeks before Christmas. At the time, nothing seemed unusual, except the register receipt paper color and texture. It was sort of craft-paperish like. We thought it was simply a branding thing, and pretty cool. We hosted Christmas at our house, exchange presents, and had a good time. A week later, we get a frantic phone call from my wife's sister. She is at their local store of this national change, trying to do what so many of us have to do, exchange the present for the correct size. If you think this is simply a story about exchanging presents, just wait to hear the rest. My sister-in-law had just been accused of stealing the sweater and trying to get a legitimate receipt under the ruse of exchanging the sweater with a fake receipt. Now, my wife's sister is angry and venting on my wife, both trying to figure out what the heck was going on. My wife called our local store to find out that this particular store was beta testing a new register system. How nice! Our local store was nice in trying to resolve our problem, but their initial solution was to have the sweater exchanged at their store only. After presssing on with the store manager, we were able to get a hold of a team member of the project team. The problem they told us, was that the old system could not understand where the transaction number was on the new receipt. They gave us instructions to give to the store in order to manually process the exchange. This is called a work around, but you do the work while going around and around. We called my sister-in-law back, and spoke with her and that store's manager. We followed the instructions as laid out as guess what, it did not work. We gave the store the name and number of the project team member that was helping us. However, when the store tried to call, no one answered. Given the busy exchange season, and the fact that the store still thinks someone is trying to scam them, they were not interested in pursuing the matter further. To wrap up the story, my sister-in-law had to ship the sweater back to us, so we could exchange it, and we had to ship the new sweater back to her. We spoke with our local store and the team member several times, and both refused to reimburse shipping expenses or offer any sort recompence (other than "we're sorry"). By the way, I agree, that chain is sorry.

This is where quality is dead comes in. Not only was the software not ready for beta testing, but it was dropped on unsuspecting consumers in a business that requires signficant consumer spending to stay afloat. There was no concern for any issues that consumers may run into, no method for resolving them, nor any true means to compensate consumers for being victimized for bad software and practices. Usually a beta community gets the opportunity to engage in the test or opt out. Not in this case. Which really makes this a public release and not a beta test. In this situation, I am imagining that only a handful of people were impacted, so maybe this is blown out of proportion. But, as a consumer with a large family in the demographic this store wants to target, I think I matter more than they realize. But this is where the weak penalties come into play. If my family doesn't shop at that store, which is our only recourse left as 2 stores, and a project team member fully know of our experience, their sales are not materially affected. (By the way, I am not calling for a boycott, let's not get crazy now) With such weak penalties it is a wonder that this hasn't happened faster and more frequently than it has.