Thursday, December 20, 2012

Theory of Qualitivity

"Quality" is great word and is an integral part our daily life. On Googling "Quality" I found Wikipedia's definition more compelling than rest.

It says "Quality is Non-inferiority or superiority of something. It's Fitness for purpose."

Sounds Simple right!! great...but how it's integral part our Daily life???? !@#!$!$???

Keeping aside our roles as Developers/Testers, aren't we consumers too…

"While buying Gadgets…..looking for Best quality Phone/Tablet"
"At Restaurant….looking for best quality of food (*Any Cuisine*)"
"At Hotel stay….looking quality of Service "

Such examples are countless, I would say that every language has it's own definition for "Quality" word. In Hindi language it's commonly referred as "Visheshta" and in common slang "Sasta aur Theekao". But when we transform ourselves from Consumer to Developer we do miss out this imp factor (Quality) while writing our code.
Food.jpg
Pic 1.1
Quite tempting pic (pic 1.1) isn't it….These are some famous Indian snacks that you can find in corner of every famous streets in India. Some like the taste of it and some the quality of snack while few like the combination of ingredients...but

 how much time does chef get's to prepare ?
Ans: Not more than 5-10 minutes
You may ask from where of sudden this came into picture of Quality… In these 4 years of experience, I saw people who "Blame time for Quality "and yet they tend to forget in  role as consumer they never give luxury of time for a chef and yet expect good quality and taste both.

Another set of Image (pic 1.2) though not easily found in corner of every famous street, but there is a catch. As said "Get it right from the beginning or you have created a permanent mess" and this caption finely defines the content in Image.

Images.jpg
Pic 1.2
Everyone knows why "Tower of Pisa" has been awarded a prefix "Leaning" and a biggest car Recall Program from Toyota due to serious bug in rolled out models and last but not least… A Steps trying to address the needs of Wheel Chair. It applies the same for Software as well.

Theory of Qualityvity
Lets discuss in real terms, Quality is always relative and you can't define benchmark quality in terms of 100% . There are lots of blogs/articles which do mention the same.


In simple terms, Quality can be regarded as Function of "Cost" and "Time". To be more specific Quality is Directly proportional to "Time" to a till a threshold level(T). Beyond this threshold level more time spend on improving quality might not have same impact.

Here we have 3 cars from MarutiSuziki, Honda & Mercedes. Given the cost of Vehicle and time required for Manufacturing differs for all the 3 models here. It doesn't mean car of MarutiSuziki has no quality at all, considering the cost bracket this would be best Quality car in it's range.

I would define improving Quality as a process of MarutiSuziki car becoming Honda Car over a period of Time & Cost.
Maruti-Alto-800-gets-6500-bookings-before-launch-2-600x409.jpgHonda-Jazz.jpgmercedes-benz-slk-r172-2011-wallpaper-for-1920x1080-hdtv-1080p-13-15.jpg
Quality should be always considered as "Act of Prevention than Act of Detection", but the best part about it can be confirmed by process of Testing[1]. Complete team is responsbile for quality where dev team responsbile for writing quaility code and Test team responsible for verifying Quality of product.

References

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