As discussed previously, quality is an abstract idea. It largely associated with customer's expectation on things. Therefore, to deliver quality in product becomes a challenge of catching the carrot hanging in front of a donkey.
However, it does not mean that quality is not achievable. Since quality is associated with customer's expectation which is also a moving target, the first step to deliver quality is to turn customer's expectation from a moving target into a lock down target. This immediately enables both the customer and project team to have a common and achievable target on quality.
To avoid different interpretation in the expectation, the expectation should be specified in the following:
- a set of acceptance criteria;
- a set of functional and non-functional requirements.
The criteria and requirements must be specified in a form that they are testable, atomic and unambiguous. They should be clear enough that one can easily determine whether a criteria or requirement has or has not been satisfied. There should not be any room for "yes, but ..." or "no, but ...". If there is any "yes, but ..." or "no, but ...", there are cracks in the quality and problem could arise from these cracks somewhere down in the track.
