The Ethics of Software Quality

Security professionals are in a hard place. If there is a security breach, they take the fall. However, if they do their job right, no one notices. Further, they may even meet resistance to doing their job right because they are being overly cautious, taking too much time, costing too much money, etc., etc.

I think a software professional who wants to create quality software faces the same challenge. You may deliver quality software, but then get accused of taking too long (according to some arbitrary idea someone has) or "gold plating." You get compared to co-workers who write code much faster, even though it may have more bugs. Focusing on speed as a primary metric for software development is a race to the bottom.

This is not to say that there aren't times when something needs to be timeboxed, or a programmer needs to resist "gold plating." It is possible to fall into a trap of tweaking and refactoring ad infinitum. However, I don't find that there is a bright line or objective standard for judging this. Maybe that is because I believe software development to be a creative, exploratory process, so I'm apt to think there's more than a little taste and discernment.

To produce quality software you must take an ethical approach. What do I mean by this? While it seems obvious that there are ethical issues in software development---for example poor quality software wastes time and money, causes frustration, and in the extreme case can cause damage to property and loss of life---that's not what I mean.

What I mean by "ethical approach" (and maybe there's a better term for it) is you must have an intrinsic motivation to create quality software. You have to do it because "it's the right thing." You will rarely get support from managers to produce quality software. You will shoulder the blame for quality issues in your code. If your code is beautiful and functional and bug-free, rarely will anyone even notice, let alone commend you.

How can you develop a "software quality conscience"? I don't have all the answers, but I have a couple of suggestions:

1. Read good code and read about good code. If it is garbage in, then it will be garbage out.
2. Surround yourself by other people who care about quality. Find a team of like minded people whether it is at work or not.
3. Keep things in perspective. I find, as I'm further into my career, that I've had bosses bluster at me to get things done by a certain time ("do or die"), and found that it didn't really have a huge impact on the success or failure of my project or company. Don't be insubordinate or lazy, but don't buy into the hype. Be realistic.

 You are responsible for fighting the good fight. So step up.