In the first week of March I attended two Spotify unconferences about Continuous Deliver and Quality (which I also had the pleasure to facilitate). I am amazed on how many we were (people had flown in from a lot of other places), the energy in the room, the quality of the discussions, and the massive number of practical initiatives that where suggested and started.
One reoccurring theme was the importance of a stop-the-line culture and what that actually means. I have to admit I was quite active in those discussion, and also held a short lightning talk about the broken windows syndrome. My this simple formula when it comes to bugs is this:
- You write tests to create a product without defects
- When a test fails you fix the underlying problem
- A bug found outside testing is just an unwritten test that would have failed
- Failing tests are always fixed
- Therefore: a zero bug policy is the only thing that works in the long run
- Otherwise you will suffer the broken windows system
- Just do it
- Now
Here’s my slides:
