The Mindset

When talking about quality, people often focus on exit criteria: the conditions that must be satisfied for a certain activity in the development process to end successfully. This tendency becomes more noticeable as you look at the development process from a higher perspective. Top-level managers, for example, are often concerned on the delivery date of the product and its quality, which are the ultimate exit criteria. This, of course, is a legitimate claim.

However, we sometimes forget that every process has two ends. Requiring an activity to meet certain exit criteria is necessary in every process. But at the same time, we must ensure that some basic entry criteria will be met before the activity starts.

Here is a common example. Have you ever been put in charge of a project, in which the deadline has been set before the high-level requirements were determined? Have you found yourself chasing different people to gather these basic requirements while the deadline was already closing on you? This is a classic example of failing to meet a basic entry criterion. I do not argue that every detail in the requirements has to be sealed before development starts. However, you cannot possibly plan a software project, and all the more so commit to a delivery date, before you have a good sense of what needs to be done. A good set of high-level requirements is an entry criterion for the actual development of the product.

Failing to meet the entry criteria of a certain activity is bound to result in failure to achieve its exit criteria. In the example above, committing to a delivery date before knowing what needs to be done will probably result in a delayed delivery. When you only examine the exit criteria of the process, you have nothing to do about such a problem.

What can you do about it? Every activity in the development process must have clear entry criteria. If these conditions are not met, a red flag should be raised, warning you, your managers and other stakeholders from a potential failure in meeting the goals of this activity. This by itself will not necessarily do the magic in every case. However, recording such red flags and analyzing their actual consequences will help the organization improve its development processes as well as its business processes to reduce such problems in the future.