Software Quality in a non-software company?
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Nicros
Nicros writes "Hello slashdotters! I work for a publicly traded biotech company that happens to write software. The software we write is, in fact kind of critical for the business, in that without it no data would ever be read from our instruments, and no analyses would be performed on that data.
The problem is that as a 'biotech' company, I have the impression that we, as a company, are not taking software quality seriously.
We have no senior management with any history of commercial software development- because as a biotech company, we only hire biotech related people. The result is our C level has really no clue whatsoever as to what is going on in software, much less what software really is.
All of our quality processes are related to manufacturing our system (not software), so we are constantly forced into ad-hoc development since there is no real process for our development.
Repeated requests to hire someone with some real commercial software development experience have gone unanswered- I believe due to the problem above, in that nobody understands that software development has its own processes, and quality control measurements.
So the question- is this just a fact of life and I need to deal the best I can? I have been to the CEO directly one-on-one and although he agreed this was an issue, he thanked me, said he would look into it and that was the end of that. He has bigger things to worry about.
What else can I do? Any pearls of wisdom from the gallery on how to handle this?"
The problem is that as a 'biotech' company, I have the impression that we, as a company, are not taking software quality seriously.
We have no senior management with any history of commercial software development- because as a biotech company, we only hire biotech related people. The result is our C level has really no clue whatsoever as to what is going on in software, much less what software really is.
All of our quality processes are related to manufacturing our system (not software), so we are constantly forced into ad-hoc development since there is no real process for our development.
Repeated requests to hire someone with some real commercial software development experience have gone unanswered- I believe due to the problem above, in that nobody understands that software development has its own processes, and quality control measurements.
So the question- is this just a fact of life and I need to deal the best I can? I have been to the CEO directly one-on-one and although he agreed this was an issue, he thanked me, said he would look into it and that was the end of that. He has bigger things to worry about.
What else can I do? Any pearls of wisdom from the gallery on how to handle this?"
Software Quality in a non-software company? More Login
Software Quality in a non-software company?