11 Processes, Tools, Products, and Standards
If you have no processes defined, and no standards to match your product, or processes against, almost
anything will look pretty good.
There is a tribe called Software Quality Methodists (who have various gods including ISO 9000, CMM,
and Six Sigma) who by contrast see any company without a wall full of paper defining processes, and
practices, as a fertile space in which they can impose their own Very Wonderful Solutions.
You can have some great products built by a very few good people who know how to work around
each other like cooks in a busy kitchen, but things get more difficult when such groups grow, and are
replenished. If you want to be a big, dedicated organization you??™d better get your own structure in place.
But structure and process are relatively easy to determine, impose, and support. Product quality requires:
??? A really clever product vision
??? Clever people to build
??? Clever people to test
??? A stable and helpful environment in which to build
??? A management which understands the vision, and the process, its weak points, and how to apply
pressure most productively to achieve that vision
??? Great salespeople (the others may get you a great product but they won??™t be around for long if it
doesn??™t sell)
If you want a supportive structure, then it??™s best that the people who have to do the work define it, live
with it, and modify it as they see fit.
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