Moore’s Law, that the number of transistors on a single chip will double every two years, is one of the most influential technology axioms of the past 40 years. The explosion of computing power and its corresponding precipitous drop in cost have fundamentally changed our society and economy. Everything from coffee makers to refrigerators to automobiles is better, cheaper, and more feature-rich due to the electronics that control them.
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What Moore’s Law doesn’t address is the software needed to control all those electronics. A reasonable corollary to Moore’s Law is that the number of lines of computer source code in a typical product will double every two years.
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This is daunting for those who know software’s dirty little secret: Software quality has improved little over the past 30 years. In other words, the number of defects (bugs) per thousand lines of software code has changed little over time. In his book Code Complete, coding and software development expert Steve McConnell states that there are anywhere from 20 to 30 defects per thousand lines of software code, a number that has remained pretty much the same over the past 15 years. Unless we improve the fundamental quality of software development, the number of electronics-related defects in a typical product could double every two years.
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Toyota’s recent response to claims of unintended acceleration in its vehicles illustrates the potential pitfalls of today’s technologically complex automobiles. Until its recent troubles, Toyota was the poster child for quality, having pioneered the use of kaizen principles of continuous improvement. Toyota embraced the teachings of quality guru Dr. W. Edwards Deming and instilled a collaborative culture of see something, say something, and do something. It was one of the first companies to understand that quality did not stop at its corporate boundaries: Designs are shared across the supply…