Dave Aronson

T. Rex at Codosaurus, LLC

Dave is a semi-retired software development consultant (writing code and giving advice about it), with 39 years of professional experience in a wide variety of languages, techniques, domains, etc. He is the T. Rex of Codosaurus, LLC (his one-person consulting firm, which explains how he can get such a cool title, at https://www.Codosaur.us/) near Washington, DC, USA. His main focus in software lately is to spread the gospel of quality, including defining what that even means, and talking about techniques to achieve it. In his spare time, he brews mead, teaches others how – and speaks at conferences, in English, Portuguese, and French.

Talk:
ACRUMEN: What IS Software Quality Anyway?!

Without a good definition of software quality, you’ll have a tough time achieving it, and if you don’t share a definition with someone, you’ll have a hard time convincing them that you have achieved it! This talk introduces ACRUMEN, my simple yet fairly comprehensive definition, that you can use with any tech stack, for free. I will explain why we need a new definition, and how to apply this one, then explore each aspect in turn, including further nuances and immediately useful tips on how to achieve each one. You will come away better equipped to analyze the quality of anybody’s software, give precise feedback on its shortcomings, teach the next generation of developers how to produce high-quality software, and most importantly, improve the quality of your own software.

Key Takeaways:

  • It stands for the idea that software should be Appropriate, Correct, Robust, Usable, Maintainable, and Efficient. (Come to the talk to see what the N stands for!)
  • What I mean by all those words! Some are obvious, some not so much.
  • That’s the usual order of priority, but it may be different sometimes, though Appropriate will always be first.
  • How we can use this, other than as just a checklist.

Target Audience:

  • Mainly devs of any level who want to improve the quality of their software – they may already have such a desire, but only a vague notion of what that means.