Quality is not optional

I keep seeing this “good enough” meme going around.  At a company meeting where I work, recently, management was espousing the same crap.

I can only hope that these people are plagued with “50%-good” products.  How about some 50%-good tires on their cars?  Maybe they’d like some 50%-good surgery, or a 50%-good pacemaker.  How about getting to fly in 50% good airplanes for the rest of his life?  I know!  Let’s give their kids some “good enough” education!

I’m not surprised that most of this bullshit is coming out of a culture in which Walmart was able to become the success it has.  Recently, we needed something for a weekend project and bought it from Walmart, because it was closest store.  What poor quality crap.  It’ll all need to be replaced in a year, contributing to landfill and wasted resources.  I’m not going purchase from Walmart any more, and I’m not going to spend money on half-baked, crap-quality software, either.

Word gets around about quality.  It’s the American auto-maker’s nightmare right now.  Ford, Chrystler, Chevrolet… they’re all struggling to reverse decades of built-up public perception about poor quality, even when some of them are actually making fairly decent cars right now.  It isn’t quite the same with software; Microsoft has been making crap software for, well, ever, and they’re still dominant.  But I think that if you take the monopoly factor out of it, software companies do suffer from delivering half-assed product to their customers. , ever, and they’re still dominant.  But I think that if you take the monopoly factor out of it, software companies do suffer from delivering half-assed product to their customers.