Introduction to the Personal Software Process(SM)

20 A Personal Commitmentto Quality

Quality work is important to your employers, your customers, and to you. This chapter discusses why you should establish quality as your highest personal priority.

20.1 The Importance of Quality

As a software engineer, the quality of the programs you produce will be critically important to your employers and to your customers. Software is used in many demanding applications, and software defects can cause economic damage and even physical harm. When the programs you write are used to do financial work or word processing, their defects can be annoying and even costly, but nobody is likely to be killed or maimed. When your software is part of a system that flies airplanes, drives automobiles, manages air traffic, ...