SOFTWARE QUALITY AND PRODUCTIVITY: ARE THEY COMPATIBLE?

Abstract

Many view quality and productivity as competing concepts. After all, doesn’t high software quality come at a high cost? Doesn’t it mean that a large amount of "extra stuff" needs to be done during the software development cycle? And, doesn’t that mean that software productivity takes a back seat to (and a major hit from) quality efforts? This paper will explore these issues. This paper provides some preliminary data that supports how a disciplined software engineering process can (and has) resulted in high quality software while actually increasing productivity. Data has been gathered on organizations that have a disciplined, quality-oriented software engineering process in place. That data shows that quality and productivity can (and do) coexist. The data will be discussed along with an explanation of how these results can be achieved.