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Fixing All The Bugs Won't Solve All The Problems - Deming's Path Of
Frustration

In software designTags software architecturePublish DateApril 8, 2024
533 Views# jeffpsherman


    A program of improvement sets off with enthusiasm, exhortations,
    revival meetings, posts, pledges.  Quality becomes a religion. 
    Quality as measured by results of inspection at final audit shows
    at first dramatic improvement, better and better by the month. 
    Everyone expects the path of improvement to continue along the
    dotted line.

    [Deming-Frustration-1]

    Instead, success grinds to a halt.  At best, the curve levels
    off.  It may even turn upward.  Despondence sets in.  The
    management naturally become worried.  They plead, beg, beseech,
    implore, pray, entreat, supplicate heads of the organizations
    involved in production and assembly, with taunts, harassment,
    threads, based on the awful truth that if there be not
    substantial improvement, and soon, we shall be out of business.

    W. Edwards Deming, Out of the crisis, Page 276

In software, as in manufacturing, some problems occur due to bugs or
"special causes", and some are "common cause" due to the nature of
the system's design and implementation.  Fixing bugs is removing
special causes.  Removing bugs greatly improves software quality, but
it won't impact "common cause" issues.

Some "common cause" software performance issues I have encountered:

  * The software is "in the cloud", but really it is in one data
    center in the US.  As a result the software is slow and laggy for
    customers in Europe and Asia.
  * The software runs slowly because the hardware is
    underprovisioned.
  * The software runs slowly because large amounts of unnecessary
    data are being sent to the users.
  * The software runs slowly because of inefficient data access
    patterns.

Even with no bugs, "common cause" issues can result in low quality
software.  

The way off of Deming's Path Of Frustration is to attack system
design and implementation issues with the same fervor used to fight
bugs.

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