Users’ Impressionism and Software Quality

Being software engineers, we have spent years of studies and practice in software engineering, which has enabled us to deploy an analytical way of thinking. Our engineering approach makes us decompose abstract terms –such as software quality– until we reach quantifiable, measurable characteristics. It is this approach with regard to software quality that had lead to the development of commonly applied quality standards. But what about users of our software, particularly those who rarely take an engineering approach similar to ours simply because the deploy a different way of thinking? How do they perceive software quality? If we are to improve the quality of software that we produce, it is important to understand and address their way of thinking too. We argue that the way in which these software users perceive software quality compares to the way impressionist painters perceived visual reality in terms of transient effects of light and color. In order to prove this point we present data from software projects during the last ten years. Analysis of these data has guided us to conclude that the initial user impression of software quality is hard to change. In particular, the positive impressions may be revised in time, but not significantly, whilst the negative impressions are very hard to change over time.