Comment:     by Dan McGrath 5/23/2002 Being one of those who also got fooled by the Y2K mirage, I don't think we have come that far. The company I work for still lives in the reality you describe in your first paragraph. Until companies see the lack of quality as a gaping would spilling out blood, (their hard earned money), they won't do a thing about it. Even then, most companies will feel that, throwing more money at and hiring more developers to fix the problems, is a better bandage. I hope I'm wrong.
	Comment:     by Rick Briggs 5/22/2002 Nice article Linda. although I wish I were as sanguine about changing attitudes from lessons learned. I tend to agree with Joe Strazzere in saying that so far there has been little evidence of changing attitudes to quality as result of technology 'push' in the area of e-commerce, or anywhere else for that matter. In all aspects of IT project management, the principles of 'best practice' are well known and have been for years, but it doesn't seem to prevent managers making the same old mistakes over and over again. I think the problems are built into the system. Higher management making demands for results from lower management without...Read On
	Comment:     by David Beamer 5/17/2002 Based on my reading of the previous replies to the article, as well as my own situation, I'd have to say that a bunch of people still aren't riding the golden quality bus yet. Over the past few months and years, I've seen an increasing amount of positive-sounding rhetoric from upper management where I work. We're doing CMM assessments. There's a new QA department, headed by a Sr. VP, which has a "big stick" to force development to fix problems before they'll allow a product release out the door. I've even heard that they used the stick once. But in my little corner of the world, QA is still the understaffed stepchild, so to speak. ...Read On
	Comment:     by iggy pop 5/17/2002 I'd agree that compared to where we were a decade ago, the understanding of 'need for QA' has vastly improved. Yet, the quality seems to be going down. Sure, more 'automation' and first or second teir testing seems to be in. But older generation of individuals seem to agree. We are not 'breaking' the software as we used to. It's more of 'make sure basic things are in tact'. I don't remember last time I spent a week trying to break something. Personally, I think this is due to Microsoft's heavy influence on the market to roll out a new version every 2 years or less. Given such a short life-span, people feel less need for system to...Read On
	Comment:     by Linda Miller 5/15/2002 Linda great article and I agree with you in regard to corporate IT taking more interest in QA. There are more job postings for QA Management and/or Software Testers than we have seen in a while. We are getting more request for training and TMM Assessments than outsourcing. With all the media coverage on bad software last year I think it is time IT managers realize they cannot deliver software without some type of QA, Software Testing or Unit Testing. Linda M (MST Lab)
	Comment:     by Bill Thomas 5/15/2002 It may be the golden age of software quality but I'm not sure I see it. I think companies mostly give lip service to quality initiatives. What company in their right mind would say "we don't really care about quality, just ship the product" but in reality that seems to be what happens most of the time. Just recently I heard the comment that our schedules are really tight, we don't have time for process improvement. We're standing at the foot of the quality mountain, it's a long way to the top.
	Comment:     by H Babbar 5/15/2002 Unfortunately it is all to common to see projects have ridiculous time scales and consequently when development takes longer than planned then testing suffers.
	Comment:     by Vitaly Vigasin 5/14/2002 Well, with all respect - nothing new. We were being constantly told about importance of quality as well as other "advanced" approaches in both good times of the IT industry and after the Great Crash occured. Not much signs of changes, though. Probably, it will require coming new generations of managers and more money to escape from this field before the whole industry becomes more intelligent than it is usually considered by the public.
	Comment:     by Bill Bozaglu 5/14/2002 Good article Linda. You have a good down to earth way of expressing our problems. I especially liked your point of using accepted standardized programming languages to minimize problems associated with custom code vis a vis automated tools. Keep up the good work! Bill Bozaglu a.k.a.
	Comment:     by Marek Jastrzebski 5/14/2002 I used to work with Linda Hayes at AutoTester in 1994. Her passion for quality software hasn't changed. She was ahead of her time then and she is ahead now. Her way of looking at quality is what is missing in the industry. No matter what the tools, what the methodologies you may use in you will produce shoddy software unless you really inject some passion into it. Her passion for quality has her see things about processes that others miss. I am happy to have worked with her. Keep going Linda. Yours, truly Marek J, the crazy Polish automation tester.
	Comment:     by Olive O’Grady 5/14/2002 I agree quality has arrived, quality at the start, during development and at the end of the process. Software development is known to be a delicate business; quality at the source and throughout is integral to the end product. It is finally being recognised how we must hand over the best product possible to our customers. It is an all-important leading edge in today’s business practices. It is a wake up call and its being acknowledged by those who used to think quality was more an interference to workflow rather than a support to the aim of the best product. Business survival is the evidence. In today’s ‘aggressive’ survival of the...Read On
	Comment:     by Irene Cummins 5/14/2002 As a content webmaster, what I see is a failure on many management teams to even understand what a web application is. To many they are "just web pages" even though you have a monster Oracle backend and a layer of complex middleware programming. The belief is that "you just use a little HTML to get it up and running -- how hard is that, and why are you insisting on testing?" is a constant comment I hear. I guess hitting the clueless in the money belt is the only way it's going to get fixed. By the way, you CAN use SQA disciplines on web sites -- it only makes the product better.
	Comment:     by Erik Petersen 5/14/2002 Unfortunately, the old ignorance seems to be still inbred in many places. Sticky Minds reported on a Meta group survey of Dec 2001, where only 20% of all web sites got tested. That is a russian roulette approach to quality. I have heard of several projects recently where there is no quality initiative, and the test lead/manager is being asked to work part time! (and one project was solo co-ordinating an acceptance test project with half a dozen stakeholders. Who is going to co-ordinate the project in their absence?) Contracts seem to be going to the lowest priced resource, and the prices seem to be rock bottom now. I saw a short term 3...Read On
	Comment:     by Bobby True 5/14/2002 Ms. Hayes, Very good article. In the rush to deliver products that we think will give us a competitive edge, we loose sight of the fact that quality and usability is really what will keep our customers. Most companies feel that just because they employ quality initiatives they have done their part to ensure quality services to their customer base. Unfortunately, Quality, Training, and Documentation always come at the end of the project cycle and are usually the areas that get cut or streamlined in order to meet missed deadlines. I await the day when our quality teams are applauded for their efforts and are view as instrumental...Read On
	Comment:     by Joe Strazzere 5/13/2002 So what exactly has arrived? You have mentioned several reasons why it COULD be a good time for an improved focus on quality, but no evidence that is has actually happened.
	Comment:     by Srinivasan Desikan 5/13/2002 I think we are entering golden age of quality. The 9-11 and Economy slow-down have created plenty of awareness in the business processes, budget planning and security. Those companies which kept the process improvements on the shelf, are going out of business. This may look like a generic comment but I have been following few companies to conclude this point. There is also a realization in terms of "Commonsense processes". If there is a process which helps in meeting business goals, then they are implemented immediately than those set of processes which are theoritical/traditional. Companies don't have money to invest in process...Read On
	Comment:     by abrachan pudussery 5/13/2002 Linda, well done..well done... well done... Thanks for your boldness to touch the truth. I think the time of the middle man in quality is also getting over. No one can wait for 3 to 6 years for the return on investment. I foresee a golden era for realistic quality improvement, where the improvement effort is driven by the people in the operations, delivering immediate results, which will add to the bottomline of the organization straight. P.Abrachan Novell Bangalore

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