The ROI for Improving Software Quality

Herb Krasner

Leading organizations have learned that whenever proactive quality management with measurable outputs is used as a foundation for action, the concept of financial ROI is applicable. However, this is not yet become common practice in many IT organizations. In light of an increased focus on quality and customer satisfaction, IT executives and managers have raised the question: What is software quality's ROI? The answer to this question is unique for every organization and is based on two fundamental conditions: quality must be measurable (preferably in dollars) and a cause-and-effect relationship must exist between quality and financial results (e.g. costs, revenue, etc.). This presentation with Dr. Herb Krasner explores the following basic questions: 1. How can "good" software quality increase ROI? and; 2. How can "poor" software quality decrease ROI? Examples and cases of actual company software quality ROI results will be presented, and their implications discussed.

Herb Krasner is a senior faculty member at the University of Texas at Austin, and the Director of the Software Engineering Industry Affiliates Program. He is also a successful software excellence consultant. His personal mission, spanning several decades, has been to enable the development of superior software, and to stamp out poor quality software, wherever found. He is best known for his leading edge work on modeling the costs of software quality, reporting the ROI data for software process improvement, coaching organizational improvement programs and reporting the results from his empirical studies of professional programmers. He has published over 55 papers, articles and book sections, has spoken at many professional conferences and meetings, and is active in professional organizations and societies. His current research interest areas include empirical studies of software engineering, the human factors of software engineering (e.g. teamwork models), agile development methods, software design paradigms, software engineering process improvement, and software engineering best practices.

Ed Yourdon is an internationally-recognized computer consultant, as well as the author of over 500 technical articles and 27 books, including Byte Wars, Managing High-Intensity Internet Projects, Death March, Rise and Resurrection of the American Programmer, and Decline and Fall of the American Programmer. His latest book, Outsource: Competing in the Global Productivity Race, discusses both current and future trends in offshore outsourcing, and provides practical strategies for individuals, small businesses, and the nation to cope with this unstoppable tidal wave.

Joe Burns has over 20 years experience developing and implementing products and services for the quality assurance industry. He is an entrepreneur and enjoys building world class QA solutions. He has successfully founded and developed testing products which are integrated with companies like IBM, TIBCO, and webMethods. He is one of only a handful of people that developed a startup product that is now being commercially sold all over the world. This product is currently on the Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Integration Testing. He is an expert in QA tools and processes and enjoys sharing his real life experiences with his audience.