What do I mean by quality? In the context of a system development project, quality refers the functionality, availability, reliability, maintainability and performance of the system. High quality is never an accident. It must be an objective of the project.

I am a quality fanatic. I believe that all systems should be designed and built to the highest quality standards possible given, of course, the limitations faced by every project. What are these limitations? Budget constraints, time constraints, project team experience, project team expertise and feature expectations all play a role in reducing the emphasis on quality. That is simply a fact of life.

Despite the limitations, there are things we can easily do to improve the quality of any system. Within my sphere of influence, I include these activities in all of my projects:

• requirement reviews (executives, managers, users, technical staff)
• project plan reviews (deliverables, dependencies, estimates, dates)
• prototypes (don't force users to imagine what they are getting - show them!)
• design reviews (great for catching flaws early plus team cross-training)
• coding guidelines (code belongs to the team - it should be consistent)
• code reviews (no egos, no judgment, no managers - just good feedback)
• test plans and test plan reviews (functional and performance)
• test it until you are confident (and then test it some more)
• iterative design and development, frequent test releases

With a little mentoring and some management support, these activities become second nature. Higher quality systems naturally follow. You will see positive results very quickly.