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Kelly Akins - Bayshore Solutions Sr. Developer
By: Kelly Akins – Bayshore Solutions Programming Team
I’m sure you’ve heard that old saying “you can’t rush quality.” I agree with it 100%! High quality takes time and sometimes we tend to over-apply our expertise to polish off the rough edges and we run out of time before everything is perfect. At other times we are constrained to accomplish a daunting task in an unrealistically short period of time and still expected to maintain the same high level of quality.
You know, one of the issues I have dealt with in my career as a software developer is rework. I can’t tell you how many extra hours I have had to put into a project to fix the cracks that were left because corners had to be cut, there was no time for robustness, or the specifications were confusing or not detailed enough. Adding up all the hours of rework and rework, you’ll find a lot of time wasted when the project timeline was poorly organized. Seasoned and experienced developers can drill through vague requirements, unmystify them and produce sound accurate technical specifications. But this takes more time and resources up front but will save so much extra time in the end. So the ability to accurately decipher business needs is a crucial skill to producing high quality work in a reasonable amount of time without major modification.
It seems that high quality is what is desired but quick turn-around is expected. Let me elaborate on this. Going back to the “you can’t rush quality” thought, there is also the metaphor “time is money.” Unfortunately in the real world, time and quality tend to be antagonistic. You must sacrifice one to gain the other. Business needs tend to favor short time for budgeting considerations, but because of a misunderstanding of this principle, they unrealistically expect to receive high quality within that budget constraint. Sometimes this is possible, but not for the majority of work.
You can take a more balanced approach when you spend time planning and envisioning the scope of the system ahead of time. This tends to produce better, more solid specifications and requirements, and you can identify pitfalls beforehand that generally can become stopgaps when discovered in the middle of development. By seeking a balance somewhere between high quality and quick turn-around, you can maximize your investment and mitigate much of the risk.
So when planning a software application project, focus more effort in round-table pre-planning discussions, including those who will be managing and building the project. You’ll gain a clearer understanding of your project as a whole and will be in a better position to assure its quality.
Kelly Akins is a Senior Developer at Bayshore Solutions—a Tampa Web Design, Web Development, and Internet Marketing Company.
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