Why software quality improvement fails: (and how to succeed nevertheless)

Abstract

Quality improvement is the key to enormous cost reduction in the IT business. However, improvement projects often fail in practice. In many cases, stakeholders fearing, e.g., a loss of power or not recognizing the benefits inhibit the improvement. Systematic change management and an economic perspective help to overcome these issues, but are little known and seldom applied. This industrial experience report presents the main challenges in software quality improvement projects as well as practices for tackling them. The authors have performed over 50 quality analyses and quality improvement projects in mission-critical software systems of European banking, insurance and automotive companies.