Business value of software quality

Developers often need to justify to non-technical peers why some decisions are taken that do not bring immediate value (think about refactoring an old module or developing some test coverage). There is a clear gap between the business and engineer departments that needs to be reconciled.

When we have to discuss with other departments the business value of decisions that have been made for the sake of software quality, I always like to mention the word "money". Making some decisions, in the long run, is equivalent to saving money and providing direct value to the software. They might not generate an immediate output, or a corporeal item (as much as software can be corporeal), but they certainly will come back in the future with some benefits. I can remember a few situations when refactoring a piece of software at the right moment made the difference between having a sustainable artifact that could be extended and having a monolith, as the result of many bad design decisions, that nobody was able to maintain and in the end meant money and financial costs. The following figure reveals the losses and consequences for companies over time due to bad software quality:

This graph has been taken from a document by David Chappell, and it explains some examples of when bad software quality incurs financial loss. Losing value from lost business might remind us of when Sony closed the PlayStation network due to a network attack. If the software had been properly designed and protected, the network might have been able to keep operating, but poor design led to the company losing a considerable amount of money. A financial loss due to customer reparations happens every time a company needs to compensate clients for a problem happening as a consequence of a poor software system. The obvious financial loss from lost customers will happen when customers do not want to acquire any more services provided by an infamous company! Financial loss from lawsuits is inevitable in many cases, especially when privacy issues or stolen data are involved (and they can be very expensive!).