Good news when commitment comes from top management

A great part of our daily life is “governed” by software operated systems. Nevertheless, software engineering is still an “elite realty”, often considered an optional plus. Why do we not experience daily disasters using machines? The main reason is that process and controls are embedded in the programmers’ minds. Their skills and experience generally guarantee acceptable final quality-to-market. But ... what about time-to-market and maintenance costs? Disasters are sometimes encountered in delays and customer service costs. This paper describes the approach developed by a young company to measure and reduce the costs of no-quality. It starts with a serious, explicit and real commitment from upper management. It is effective if results are constantly monitored and goals periodically verified. We’ve named the approach Y2GR: Your Goals throughout Your Resources. That is, once you have analysed the current status of your company, and identified areas that need improvements, you set quality goals. These goals can be reached only if you prioritise and address them according to the resources that you have. Ultimately it means that your first goal is to build a great team: trust, enhance and enforce your people. You need to create communication inside the team and among teams, enforce the implicit and explicit knowledge and experience available, train in new areas, and then trust that the people will help to build what is missing in your organisation. Acknowledgement of the people’s accomplishments is indispensable to applying, maintaining and improving the system that you are building. Measures are collected and elaborated to verify the efficacy of people and products.