Software Engineering: Quality (Just the Quotes)

"Quality is never an accident; it is always the result of intelligent effort." (John Ruskin, "Seven Lamps of Architecture", 1849)

"Almost all quality improvement comes via simplification of design, manufacturing, layout, processes and procedures." (Tom Peters, "Thriving on Chaos", 1987)

"The [software] builders’​​​​​​ view of quality, on the other hand, is very different. Since their self-esteem is strongly tied to the quality of the product, they tend to impose quality standards of their own. The minimum that will satisfy them is more or less the best quality they have achieved in the past. This is invariably a higher standard than what the market requires and is willing to pay for." (Tom DeMarco & Timothy Lister, "Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams", 1987)

"Cutting costs without improvements in quality is futile." (W Edwards Deming, Forbes, 1988)

"Quality planning consists of developing the products and processes required to meet customer's needs." (Joseph M Juran, "Juran on planning for quality", 1988)

"Programmers are responsible for software quality - quality in their own work, quality in the products that incorporate their work, and quality at the interfaces between components. Quality has never been and will never be tested in. The responsibility is both moral and professional." (Boris Beizer, "Software Testing Techniques", 1990)

"Software never was perfect and won't get perfect. But is that a license to create garbage? The missing ingredient is our reluctance to quantify quality." (Boris Beizer, "Software Testing Techniques", 1990)

"Testing by itself does not improve software quality. Test results are an indicator of quality, but in and of themselves, they don't improve it. Trying to improve software quality by increasing the amount of testing is like trying to lose weight by weighing yourself more often. What you eat before you step onto the scale determines how much you will weigh, and the software development techniques you use determine how many errors testing will find. If you want to lose weight, don't buy a new scale; change your diet. If you want to improve your software, don't test more; develop better." (Steve C McConnell, "Code Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction", 1993)

"The source code is often the only accurate description of the software. On many projects, the only documentation available to programmers is the code itself. Requirements specifications and design documents can go out of date, but the source code is always up to date. Consequently, it's imperative that the code be of the highest possible quality." (Steve C McConnell," Code Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction", 1993) 

"The software architecture of a system or a family of systems has one of the most significant impacts on the quality of an organization's enterprise architecture. While the design of software systems concentrates on satisfying the functional requirements for a system, the design of the software architecture for systems concentrates on the nonfunctional or quality requirements for systems. These quality requirements are concerns at the enterprise level. The better an organization specifies and characterizes the software architecture for its systems, the better it can characterize and manage its enterprise architecture. By explicitly defining the systems software architectures, an organization will be better able to reflect the priorities and trade-offs that are important to the organization in the software that it builds." (James McGovern et al, "A Practical Guide to Enterprise Architecture", 2004)

"In general, software engineers adopt a systematic and organized approach to their work, as this is often the most effective way to produce high-quality software. However, engineering is all about selecting the most appropriate method for a set of circumstances so a more creative, less formal approach to development may be effective in some circumstances. Less formal development is particularly appropriate for the development of web-based systems, which requires a blend of software and graphical design skills." (Ian Sommerville, "Software Engineering" 9th Ed., 2011)

"Essential to improving collaboration is the alignment of incentives across teams as well as the application of shared processes and tools. The main attributes of aligned incentives include a shared definition of quality for the whole project or company and a commitment to it. Aligned with defined quality attributes, visibility and transparency can help to foster collaboration. Incentives must treat the development and operations groups as one team. That is, they should be rewarded for developing many changes that are stable and shipped."(Michael Hüttermann et al, "DevOps for Developers", 2013)

"But like many other aspects of code quality, building an abstraction for a problem comes with tradeoffs. Building a generalized solution takes more time than building one specific to a given problem. To break even, the time saved by the abstraction for future engineers needs to outweigh the time invested." (Edmond Lau, "The Effective Engineer: How to Leverage Your Efforts In Software Engineering to Make a Disproportionate and Meaningful Impact", 2015)

"Ultimately, software quality boils down to a matter of tradeoffs, and there’s no one universal rule for how to do things. […] Rigidly adhering to a notion of building something 'the right way' can paralyze discussions about tradeoffs and other viable options. Pragmatism - thinking in terms of what does and doesn’t work for achieving our goals - is a more effective lens through which to reason about quality." (Edmond Lau, "The Effective Engineer: How to Leverage Your Efforts In Software Engineering to Make a Disproportionate and Meaningful Impact", 2015)

"It is not loyalty or internal motivation that drives us programmers forward. We must write our code when the road to our personal success is absolutely clear for us and writing high quality code obviously helps us move forward on this road. To make this happen, the management has to define the rules of the game, also known as "process", and make sure they are strictly enforced, which is much more difficult than 'being agile'." (Yegor Bugayenko, "Code Ahead", 2018)

"Quality is a product of a conflict between programmers and testers." (Yegor Bugayenko, "Code Ahead", 2018)

"Quality must be enforced, otherwise it won't happen. We programmers must be required to write tests, otherwise we won't do it." (Yegor Bugayenko, "Code Ahead", 2018)