The Quality-Ready Advantage

The Wall Street Journal recently featured an article (”Consumers Are Downbeat on Economy” by Sudeep Reddy) that stated “Consumer sentiment about the economy dropped to a 28-year low amid surging gasoline prices, falling home prices and a weakening job market.”  When the economy tightens the ability to maintain a quality-focused customer experience can create a competitive advantage.  But does that theory really hold true as it relates to software development?  Do customers truly care about software quality?  After all, software doesn’t really wear out, spoil, or fall apart.  In fact, sometimes defective software works; as long as it’s used in exactly the same way once the bug is fixed.  So, unless we’re talking about applications that perform critical functions in highly public situations (regulatory and compliance related), such as public transportation, utilities or medical devices, the average consumer may not actually care that much about software quality … right?  Wrong.  Seapine Software has now surveyed nearly one thousand software development and QA individuals through our Seapine Software Quality-Ready Assessment and found that the top two factors driving organizations to focus on Application Lifecycle Management solutions are:

• The need to reduce risk by preventing poor quality from impacting customer satisfaction (23.9%)
• The need to quickly respond to customer requests and requirements (21.7%)

“The need to address compliance and regulatory issues” actually came in last with 5.4% of the vote.  Now don’t get me wrong, FDA regulations or the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which makes executives personally responsible for the quality of their organizations financial reports, certainly forces executives to focus on accountability, traceability and quality related issues.  But it’s also true that when customers demand quality corporate executives almost always pay attention.  And based on the survey numbers, customers must care a great deal about software quality.