Achieve Better Quality Through Quantity
3 key principles to produce better software products
In the book, Art & Fear: Observations On the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking, a story is told of a ceramics teacher that ran an interesting experiment. He told half his students they would be graded solely on the quantity of their work. The more they produced, the higher their grade. The other half were told they would be graded on the quality of their work. A student only needed to produce one pot to earn an A, provided it was of perfect quality. Which group do you think produced the best quality pots?
Those students who focused on quantity produced the best quality pots.
How could a focus on quantity produce better quality? You know from experience that rushing produces defects in software development. That is the problem with deadlines — teams skimp on quality or functionality to meet the deadline.
On the other hand, the more you do something, the better you get at it. That’s certainly true for me. The students in the experiment benefited from the empirical approach of “do, experience, learn, and adjust.” Your software applications will benefit from the same approach. The trick is to use that learning, and those defects, in a positive way.
