Dahlia Season Consulting

Will people die?

Him: There are too many bugs, they let the hackers steal stuff inside of the game.

Me: In an online game?

Him: Yes. 

Me: Do the people who hack and steal stuff also spend money in the game?

Him: Yes, they all do. They buy loads of stuff.

Me: So, every hacker who steals stuff also buys stuff? Is part of the appeal that they can hack free stuff once in a while? Would they spend less money if they couldn’t occasionally hack the system to get free things?

Him: …

Me: Is your company making money from this game?

Him: Yeah, this game brings in tons of money.

Me: I think your quality level is fine.

What is the right level of quality for the product you create? In my mind, it’s all based on how much harm will happen if your product fails. 

It’s on a continuum.  At one end you have pacemakers, airplanes, emergency services networks. At the other end you have fitness apps and facebook games.

If your product is on the critical end of that spectrum, and your quality is low, then very bad, no good things happen. People may die, your company may go under, you may have legal consequences, bad, bad things.

If your product is on the non-critical end of the spectrum, and your quality is high, you may have spent more time and money creating it than you needed to. (Or you may just employ a high performing XP team, in which case you probably haven’t spent too much time or money, and you might want to pivot to a more critical product!)

What are your thoughts on how much quality is enough?

#quality #bugs #ProductDevelopment