Truth in Numbers – How to Keep Positivity Bias From Sinking Your Software

I’ve never understood why people take being called a “Pollyanna” as an insult.

Is it because being overly optimistic is a bad thing in our cynical day and age?  Does a positive outlook somehow mean that you’re out of touch with the real world?

Well, if you think so, I’ve got some bad news for you. We’re all Pollyannas at heart—at least from a psychological standpoint.  Each and every one of us has a subconscious tendency to process positive information far more precisely and accurately than we do negative things.

What’s that really mean?  We’ve all got a pair of rose-colored glasses, and we use them religiously. 

And while this is rarely a bad thing, per se, there are a few scenarios where that kind of positive outlook can come back and bite you.  For example, when we apply that outlook to software testing/QA, the ensuing results can be disastrous. 

In its truest form, software quality should always be an objective measure—nothing more than a mere collection of cold, heartless data.  Unfortunately for a lot of companies, though, “quality” is much more subjective.  Without the requisite processes maturity to capture metrics like Defect Removal Efficiency (DRE), Mean Time to Defect (MTTD), and other quality-oriented metrics, their idea of their software systems’ quality is much more open to interpretation than it ever should be.

And that brings us to the problem.  With such inherently subjective interpretations of software quality, positivity bias can be dangerously misleading to software testing/QA managers.  Without real, objective measures to illustrate the hard truth, those rose-colored lenses tend to make poor-quality releases far more palatable than they should be.  This doesn’t just hurt users by delivering buggy releases; it makes IT teams far more accepting of defects than they ever should be, leading to regular occurrences of costly delays, budget overruns, and project cancellations.

Over the years, we’ve spoken to countless organizations that have echoed this very refrain: claiming that they were very satisfied with their quality while the data told a very different story.  What conspired to hide the truth from them?  Positivity bias coupled with a lack of process and perspective.

Fortunately for those organizations, we have both process and perspective (along with a wealth of expertise in improving software quality) and we’re able to show them both the quality they should be striving for and what they can do to attain it.  For each and every one of those clients, we said the same thing: measure and measure often.  By capturing metrics, you won’t just understand your project’s progress against plan; you’ll also know how those numbers fit into the historical context of all your past projects—enabling you to continually adjust your processes and baselines to deliver better and more predictable results. 

The road to improvement isn’t always easy, but with something as increasingly vital as software quality is becoming these days, it’s a path well worth taking.  Don’t be afraid to engage a partner, either—even if you only want to know if you’re on the right path (feel free to reach out to us, we’re quite good at this and promise no high-pressure sales pitches).  After all, the best way to rid yourself of positivity bias is to get an outside opinion.

Just remember, try not to take anything too personally.  It’s the numbers that are heartless, not the people who measure them.

Cheers,

Mike Hodge
Lighthouse Technologies, Inc
Software Testing | Quality Assurance Consulting | Oracle EBS Consulting