The document discusses perspectives on quality in software development. It addresses balancing stakeholder interests such as meeting requirements, cost, usability, and maintainability. It emphasizes taking a lifetime approach to software projects by focusing on adaptability, scalability, and extensibility. It also discusses prioritizing among conflicting stakeholder needs and managing quality through processes, education, and governance. The document advocates breathing life into software through understanding requirements, effective communication, reusable code, testing, and taking pride in independent work.

1. Quality – A Perspective
Vimal Joseph
Thomas P. Thomas

2. As a Software Developer, do you approach your work with
the excitement of building something?

3. Keep in mind that human purposes reign supreme

4. Context of Software Development
• Human purposes
• Dynamic – change in scope and scale
• Imperfectly understood by stakeholders
• Varying motivations of stakeholders
• State of art of Technology
• It is always emergent
• It always has a legacy
• Competencies
• Diversity – in type and levels
• Learning curve is a reality
• Organisation
• Designed and evolved
• Dispersion of competencies and people

5. Search for quality – a perspective
• Contours and guidelines of the perspective
• Balancing stakeholder interests
• Adopting a life time approach
• Guiding principle of optimisation as against maximisation
• Prioritisation is a key challenge and a perpetual one
• Management systems for quality

6. Stakeholder Interests
Client
•
Fitness for purpose
•
Managing the present – meeting requirements
•
Managing the future – scalability and extendability
•
Timeliness
•
Timing it right to capitalise on business opportunity
•
Cost
•
Staying within budget - viability
•
Managing future costs
•
Security
• Data security
• Securing the brand

7. Stakeholder Interests
Developer
• Ease to work on
• Amenable to learning
• Simplicity
• Robustness
• Adherence to standards
• Working on parts
• Transferability

8. Stakeholder Interests
Users
•
Ease of Use
•
Functional
•
Security
•
Aesthetics

9. Stakeholder Interests
Zyxware
•
Meeting client's expectations
•
Consistency with the Zyxware brand
•
Within planned costs

10. Priorities
•
Mutually reinforcing priorities
•
Conflicting priorities
•
Process for weighing of priorities
•
Non negotiables are to be defined

11. Management
•
Contracting
•
Design and institution of processes
•
Educating for compliance
•
Governance

12. Life
•
Adapting to the environment (life in its basic form)
•
Attempting to influence the environment (higher forms
of life)

13. Breathing life into software................
Come, let us breathe life into software

14. Part II : How can we achieve it?

15. Understanding Requirements
- Put yourself in the client's shoes...
- Take the ownership!

17. How do we ensure that the development is going
on as per the requirements?
- Role of Testers
- Test cases

18. Communication
Let others know what is happening...

19. Tracker updates
- Proper title
- Description, updates
- Catagorize tickets
- Set proper relationships

20. Email
- Make use of Project Short in the subject.
- [LUX-luxvt]
- Mark a copy to everyone invloved.
- Always “reply to all”

21. Closing communication threads
Elance, Tracker, Email, Tickets, Skype...

22. Follow the standards
- Use Templates
- Follow naming conventions
- file names
- project-short-code_document-type_yyyymmdd_optional-
yyyymmdd2_document-version_document-extra-description.ext
- public keys for git
- web_[project-short-code-in-lowercase]_[tag].pub
- your-name.pub
- Folder structure

23. Create new standards...
- be sensitive
- builid new templates, conventions...

24. Development
- Nomenclature

25. Avoid hardcoding...
function my_module_form_alter(&$form, &$form_state, $form_id) {
if ($form_id == "some_id") {
$form['field_name_author']['und'][0]['value']['#value'] = arg(3);
}
}
$lang = $form['FIELDNAME']['#language'];
$form['FIELDNAME'][$lang][0]['value']['#value'] = $value;

26. Follow Drupal coding standards...
- Use an indent of 2 spaces, with no tabs.
- Lines should have no trailing whitespace at the end.
- Files should be formatted with n as the line ending (Unix line
endings), not rn (Windows line endings).
- All text files should end in a single newline (n). This avoids the
verbose " No newline at end of file" patch warning and makes
patches easier to read since it's clearer what is being changed
when lines are added to the end of a file.

27. Reusable components
function custom_affiliate_links_form_alter(&$form,
&$form_state, $form_id) {
/* '96' is the vocabulary id of the vocabulary Affiliate
Category */
if ($form_id == 'event_node_form') {
$form['taxonomy'][96]['#multiple'] = 0;
}
}
function custom_affiliate_links_form_alter(&$form, &$form_state
$vocabulary_name = 'Affiliate Category';
$result = db_query("SELECT vid FROM {vocabulary} WHERE name =
$vid = db_fetch_object($result)­>vid;
if ($form_id == 'event_node_form') {
$form['taxonomy'][$vid]['#multiple'] = 0;
}
}

28. Make use of functions
function _custom_affiliate_links_get_vocabulary_id_by_name($vocabulary_name) {
$result = db_query("SELECT vid FROM {vocabulary} WHERE name = '%s'",
$vocabulary_name);
$vid = db_fetch_object($result)­>vid;
If ($vid) {
return $vid;
}
else {
return FALSE;
}
}
$vid = _custom_affiliate_links_get_vocabulary_id_by_name('Affiliate Category')
if ($form_id == 'event_node_form') {
$form['taxonomy'][$vid]['#multiple'] = 0;
}

29. Code review

30. Ensuring Quality
Testing
- Share test cases with developer
- Unit testing
- Developers and testers should work closely but independently.

31. Why would I be bothered about quality?
WHY WOULD I DO IT?
I get paid for it and I will
stay true to the contract
I am doing it for another
human being
My manager and my
peers appreciate it
No one will know, but I
will know it

32. Who am I?
WHY WOULD I DO IT? WHO AM I?
I get paid for it and I will
stay true to the contract
I am fair
I am doing it for another
human being
I am compassionate
My manager and my
peers appreciate it
I seek recognition
No one will know, but I
will know it
I take pride in my work

33. So what?
WHY WOULD I DO IT? WHO AM I? SO WHAT?
I get paid for it and I will
stay true to the contract
I am fair Extrinsic, Transactional
I am doing it for another
human being
I am compassionate Intrinsic, Boundless
My manager and my
peers appreciate it
I seek recognition Extrinsic, Dependent
No one will know, but I
will know it
I take pride in my work Intrinsic, Independent

34. Create beautiful software...........