The New Meaning of Quality in the Information Age.

• Author: Greifer, Nicholas
• Position: Abstract - Brief Article

Prahalad, C.K.

Krishnan, M.S.

Harvard Business Review, September-October, 1999, PP. 109-118.

How does a finance officer judge software quality? The authors point out that determining quality of police cars or other manufactured objects is relatively easy because they are used for specific purposes. As a result, quality can be measured in terms of conformance with standards like reliability, acceleration, gas mileage, etc. In contrast, software is used by different users to achieve different aims. In general, managers need to understand the software's domain--how employees use software and what they expect from it, underlying technologies, and what the software was designed for--before they can judge its quality. The domain of a particular software product can be categorized according to specificity and other criteria, so that...