Why ‘Good Enough’, Isn’t
The battle between time, money, resources and quality in Web design, from the perspective of the QA Manager.
Posted 15 Oct 2007, lunch time.
Tagged with budgets, project management, qa, qc, web design, web development, website qa, website testing.
I'm fully aware that I'm often annoying - a pain in the arse, in fact. I can't help it, it's my job. I have to take a step back and look at the big picture while at the same time pay attention to the smallest levels of detail in the most obscure areas; I have to be critical of my friends' work and tell them to do it all again; I have to be that irritating voice in the corner, otherwise 'the best we can do' will default to 'good enough'.
What is quality?
I define quality in a product as "the degree of excellence"; the level at which something performs its intended task and withstands the challenges that are put before it. It's about stability, maintainability, flexibility, portability, expandability, style, efficiency and the lack of defect. It's about doing it better than the rest.
Why I don't care about the budget
As Web designers, we can only do so much with the time and resources available to us, but as the person responsible for quality, I'm still going to push for only the best on every project.
I don't want to know how much we're being paid for it, how 'important' the client or how many weeks we don't have to push it live - I'm still going to point out the same failings and make the same suggestions where something can be just that little bit better.
I want us to do the best we possibly can - always.
