The new meaning of quality in the Information Age

Software applications are now a mission-critical source of competitive adva ntage for most companies. They are also a source of great risk, as the Y2K bug has made clear. Yet many line managers still haven't confronted softwar e issues - partly because they aren't sure how best to define the quality o f the applications in their IT infrastructures. Some companies such as Wal- Mart and the Gap have successfully integrated the software in their network s, but most have accumulated an unwieldy number of incompatible application s - all designed to perform the same tasks. The authors provide a framework for measuring the performance of software i n a company's IT portfolio. Quality traditionally has been measured accordi ng to a product's ability to meet certain specifications; other views of qu ality have emerged that measure a product's adaptability to customer's need s and a product's ability to encourage innovation. To judge software qualit y properly, argue the authors, manager's must measure applications against all three approaches. Understanding the domain of a software application is an important part of that process. The domain is the body of knowledge about a user's needs and expectations for a product. Software domains change frequently based on how a consumer chooses to use, for example, Microsoft Word or a spreadsheet ap plication. The domain can also be influenced by general changes in technolo gy, such as the development of a new software platform. Thus, applications can't be judged only according to whether they conform to specifications. T he authors discuss how to identify domain characteristics and software risk s and suggest ways to reduce the variability of software domains.