Software Quality: Customer Facing -vs- Developer Facing

There are, at least, two different types of quality to software. Customer facing and Developer facing.

Customer facing quality is defined by the customer and has to do with any aspect that the customer finds important. If there is some aspect of a software product that the customer dislikes for any reason the customer can deem the product to be low quality. For instance, if the software takes too long to load at startup the customer may complain about the quality of the software. If a button in a GUI interface is not where the user expects it then the customer may complain about the quality of the software. In these two examples often the user will say, "Did anyone test this before it went out the door." This line of questioning also leads many to think that enough testing will find all quality issues.

Developer facing quality is defined by the developer when making judgments about the code or the systems upon which the code is developed. Code quality is often discussed in terms of such things as no duplication, no go-to's, no global variables, etc. Code quality also encompasses such things as which database was used, which OS is the target, etc. Yet another aspect of code quality has to do with the architecture, design, and metaphors used to compose the software.

Let me be clear, the customer does not care about the code quality. (Now if you are developing software libraries, tool kits, frameworks, etc., and provide the code to your customers then this is obviously different.) To the customer it is all product quality. If a customer finds problems with their software and the customer actually has the opportunity to talk to the developer of the software and the software developer says, "Well the problem is we have way too much duplication in the code and there is this static class filled with values that get changed all over the place, yadda yadda yadda" all the customer hears are EXCUSES.

Does this mean that the developer's concerns and efforts to have a level of quality in the code are ultimately worthless? Well, if you think that then I suggest you are trying to convince yourself of something other than reality, whether you are denying the fact that you don't really have enough money or skill to be in the business or some other reason you want to blame development. Developer's have compelling reasons to address code quality issues.

Does the customer care if the software was developed by the greatest programmers? The first answer is "NO", they do not care. One reason is they don't care because they do not understand how software is made and how the making of the software is tied to the customer facing quality.

Should developers try to get customers to care about code level quality? No because I feel it is not possible to communicate such things.

So, if I am correct that customers do not care about code quality and it is difficult to imagine that the majority of customers could be enlightened. So then, what is the purpose of this posting?

There are at least two types of quality spoken of when talking about software. Often one person is talking about customer facing quality and the other is talking about developer facing quality. It causes endless discussion which get no where!

In my opinion these items are realities of software:

1. The customer cares about product quality.
2. The customer DOES NOT care about code quality.
3. The customer believes product quality is the results of testing.
4. A product can have minimum "product quality" issues and be filled with "code quality" issues.
5. A product with poor code quality will not be able to keep up with competing products in an agressive market space.
   
6. A product with poor code quality will not be able to attract or retain the talented software developers needed to move the product forward
7. A product with great code quality may receive a low quality product rating by the customers.
   
8. The customer will leave a product that lags behind the competition.
9. The customer will spend their money how they see fit.
10. A company with more money can produce more low quality code and be able to afford the incurred costs in order to push a company with less capital out of the sector.
11. A company with more money can address customer facing quality issues through the use of customer service activities such as phone support, books, tutorials, managed users groups, etc., thus the company's wealth is sufficient to afford the costs of issues with product quality.

This list could go on and on.

In the developer community can we at least be clear when we are talking about customer facing quality versus developer facing quality? Call it out when it is not clear which type of quality is being discussed or maybe it is yet another facet of quality still.

Is it obvious that this is a complex system with many inputs and feedbacks. Cash is king, up to a point. Product quality is king, up to a point. Code quality is king, up to a point.