Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 12.4
Quality improves
.
This, and the emergent behavior of systems in general, leads to problems
that can only be discovered in production. Products that sell well are
often in better shape.
Sometimes, for commercial products sold in suites, improvement could
be selective; that is, some of the modules are rarely exercised or imple-
mented by customers (Figure 12.4). Therefore, one cannot assume that
similar quality improvements have occurred across all modules of the
suite. To give an example, many ERP (enterprise relationship planning)
packages may have sold only their General Ledger or Accounting modules.
The other modules — warehouse or CRM (customer relationship manage-
ment) — may have had fewer implementations. This should not be taken
as an argument against buying new software, or getting upgrades to
existing software, that would have new (insufficiently field tested) features
and enhancements. One should be aware that there might be a period
of uncertainly, however small, every time something new is introduced
in an existing application. Sometimes customers do not have a choice, as
vendors insist that customers have the latest version of the product or
apply the latest patch.
Bugs
It is a common misconception that most bugs in software are the result
of programmer errors and bad coding practices. The programmers did
write the buggy code and are responsible to that extent; however, the
bugs may not have been introduced by their carelessness, lack of pro-
gramming skills, or poor domain knowledge. In fact, in most projects,
