“Inspection does not improve the quality, nor guarantee quality. The inspection is too late. The quality, good or bad, is already in the product. Quality cannot be inspected into a product or service; it must be built into it.” – W. Edwards Deming.

A big number of bugs that are discovered in testing processes are easy to prevent. The fact that such bugs are discovered at the testing stage, which is usually at the end of the process, shows that the developers did not perform primary quality check of their work. This wastes the time of both testers and developers, reduces motivation and efficiency, and slows development. The costs go up significantly as a bug moves through traditional SDLC. For example, IBM estimates that if a bug costs $100 to fix in the Gathering Requirements phase, it would be $1,500 in the QA testing phase and $10,000 once in Production.

While we can’t expect to test everything and go our entire lives deploying a product that’s 100% error-free, we can make strides to safeguard software as best we can. Built-In Quality is a core principle of the Lean-Agile mindset. It helps avoid the cost of delays associated with the recall, rework, and defect fixing. The Built-In Quality philosophy applies Systems Thinking to optimize the system, ensuring a fast flow across the entire value stream, and making the quality of everyone’s job. Built-In Quality practices ensure that each solution element, at every increment, meets appropriate quality standards throughout development.

One way to drive forward Built-In Quality is to adopt the Zero Bugs approach.

Without the Zero Bugs approach, you typically have the overhead and increasing cost of fixing, as well as a culture in which people are used to bugs being a standard part of their environment which only makes the backlog of bugs grow (the broken window theory).