Do Not Treat Quality as a Separate Activity
techiferous.com
techiferous.com
...those get reported upstream and ideally are used at the front end to improve though efforts like design for manufacturing. Translated to software might result in "spec for coding", meaning easily identified tests happen up front, library / common code use cases factored into the spec to limit new feature create to those features actually adding value, not redundancy, etc... Less new code, more code generated code, and reuse of code.
Additionally and regardless of the up front changes, I see this as writing tests concurrently with writing the end use code. Spec, test, code, in LEAN terms, are tightly coupled and managed together. At first, doing this is an investment. People require training, process issues, communication issues, flow issues all will combine to lower the overall productivity. But, it tends to resolve and then resonate. Once that point of resonance hits, everyone gets it, quality will go way up as will productivity.
It will remain possible to go faster in the short term, and that risk / reward will always be tempting too. What is worth what?
That, to me, is the most interesting question.
The really hard part is bootstrapping LEAN. For people not used to the way of thinking, it's hard, gets in the way, isn't as fast, etc... Push back inertia is often high and often requires a sustained investment to eliminate.
Back in the day, when I was doing a lot of manufacturing, the pressure was always get more done right now today. A good friend and mentor picked up on LEAN and I applied it in my daily work. Caught a lot of heat for it, and the dynamic was this:
Do you want them fast, or high quality today? Pick one, or leave me and the others doing LEAN alone, and you will get both over a reasonable, and dare I say, "lean" amount of time. That's how it can start. Ideally, management buys in, and drives it from the top, but it can start and spread with a group using LEAN to significantly reduce costs and improve performance without losing out on quality. Once it gets going, it gets noticed fairly quick. Excellence in those metrics is hard to miss.
Make the investment, take the hit in productivity, and come out the other side a much more competitive, efficient and high quality organization.
Tough sell, but very worth it. LEAN works, but everyone involved has to really do the work, really does have to buy in and really does need short cut discipline for meaningful gains to be had. Process is tough when a release deadline looms. Frankly, it might not be appropriate for all software cases.