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From: egnilges@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Ed Nilges)
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: Unlimited software warranties
Message-ID: <7530@idunno.Princeton.EDU>
Date: 26 Mar 91 01:03:03 GMT
References: <1991Mar13.021244.2538@ico.isc.com> <1991Mar16.171033.380@am.sublink.org> <1991Mar25.171643.3461@unislc.uucp>
Sender: news@idunno.Princeton.EDU
Organization: Princeton University
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In article <1991Mar25.171643.3461@unislc.uucp> thayne@unislc.uucp (Thayne Forbes) writes:
>
>That was part of the problem with this product.  Our customer (DoD) had
>already decided what the features were going to be, and our vendor had
>the attitude that all they had to do was meet that criterion.  And meet
>it on schedule.  And without spending so much time that they lost all
>their profit on our prearranged price/unit.  Do you see how quality got
>to be fourth on their list??
>
>Thayne Forbes  (Unisys, Salt Lake City, Ut)

Thayne, this illustrates my point that software designers have a dual
responsibility.  They are of course responsible to management and they
must in some sense do what they are told.  But they are also responsible
to themselves as a profession, if only to avoid liability when
mission-critical software breaks.

In the New York Times for March 24th, a group from your own company
(UniSys) comes in for criticism because of the nonworking status of 
a new weather radar system.  The article, on page a1 and with no
byline, states that a consultant from the Patents and Trade Marks
office (Thomas Giammo) claims that "Air Force testers had given
Unisys's computer programming office its lowest rating."  The
article did NOT make clear that a company such as Unisys has many
computer programming "offices": but imagine agreeing to management
demands for down-and-dirty, bug-ridden products and several weeks
later opening the paper to read that the quality of the system you
worked-on has been decried to the extent that the Unisys system
was decried.  Or worse, getting a letter from a lawyer accusing YOU
of poor practices after you fought for quality and lost.