I’ve always prided myself on the quality of my software. So have a lot of other people and companies. But . . . what does that even mean?Â
We toss the word “quality” around very loosely, not only in the software development field but most others too. Ask two developers, get three opinions. There seems to be no commonly accepted definition of software quality, let alone one I agree with. ;-) We seem to operate more on a basis of “I’ll know it when I see it”, though more like “when I don’t see it”.
So I set about coming up with one. I wanted somthing easily to remember (so as to spread it), technology-agnostic, yet pretty much comprehensive.
What I’ve come up with is something I call ACRUMEN. This is of course an acronym, standing for the ideas that software should be:
- Appropriate: doing what all the stakeholders need it to do, i.e., doing the right job
- Correct: that’s pretty obviously doing the job right
- Robust: hard to make it malfunction or even seem to (yeah, that’s kinda fuzzy, I’ll explain more in another post)
- Usable: easy for the intended users to use
- Maintainable: easy for developers to change
- Efficient: easy on resources (technical and other)
So what’s the N stand for? Nothing, I just tacked that on to make a real word. ;-) But you probably haven’t seen this word before, mainly because it’s not English. It’s Latin for “sour fruit”, such as citrus fruits. That’s why lemon yellow is the “official color” of ACRUMEN.
More info coming in later posts, and on my ACRUMEN page. Meanwhile, see my ACRUMEN YouTube playlist.