Do Software companies deliberately ship products with bugs?

Almost all of the software companies ships their products with a known bug list. It is important to understand what forces these companies are forced to follow this practice on regular basis. Also most of the companies have their own defined criteria to determine which bugs they can defer and deliver with the product release. Some of the possible criteria can be:

1. Bugs which are low severity and low priority

2. Bugs that may not cause any business impact

3. Bugs which have some level of workaround possible

4. Bugs which are existing (since old release) in the product

5. Bugs which are not high Priority and requires high level of efforts to fix them

These are some of the reasons that may allow some of the bugs to be deferred for a release. For any organization it is very important to determine good enough testing. Testing is good enough (This is also referred as Test Stop Criteria) if:

1. Requirements are correct and each of them are covered with at least one test scenario

2. All required functional and non-functional test scenarios are identified and are executed

3. All logical paths and conditions are exercised

4. All failed requirements are revalidated with respective regression test

5. All Identified issues planned for fix are fixed and validated

It is important to think on how as a tester you can help, contribute and voice over these areas and help improve quality within your Team and line of business:

1. Determine appropriate test strategy that maximizes the probability of finding defect

2. Try to build a Bug Deferral Criteria with your LOB, BU or product suite teams that is agreed upon by all stakeholders

3. If a defect is logged then try your best that the defect is fixed. you may not be able to do alone yourself, so use mechanisms like status reports, escalation and proper communication involving your superiors

4. If a bug is marked as deferred analyze if the bug not severe and has possible workaround. If you suspect that this bug can raise concerns from customers or decreases competitiveness in the market then raise your voice and escalate immediately. I'm sure if the alarm is genuine then it will be heard out

5. Ensure that the possible workaround is published in appropriate customer facing documents e.g. release notes, user guides, online help etc

6. Identify the means on how you can minimize the number of backlog issues. You will certainly need support from your superior and management for this.

7. Become game changers and identify measures on how you can contribute your best.

How to Solve customer problems by identifying Critical to Quality (CTQ) approach.

Many a times we are faced with situations with problems being reports from customers. If we do not look into the problems quickly and handle them carefully then we may end up with unwanted escalations and loss of business opportunities.

To manage customer problems there are many frameworks available that helps understand the problem areas and then work towards correcting them. One of such technique is Voice of Customer (VOC) to Critical to Quality (CTQ) mapping techniques in Six Sigma. This is a very effective methodology to understand and solve customer problems very quickly and effectively. Some of the elements that we need to consider for this are listed below:

1. Identify Voice of Customer (VOC) - It is very important to understand the customer problems clearly. This may include carefully examine feedback provided by customer, talking directly to customers or getting details from customer issue base etc.
2. Service/Quality Affected - Once you identify the problem customer is reporting then try to map this to a specific Service/Quality Area. This will help in alignment of identifying team and other resources needed to resolve the problem.
3. Customer Expectations - Try to understand what exactly customer needs. If the need is understood correctly then you can target the corrective measures effectively.
4. Critical to Quality (CTQ) measurement - Identify the CTQ data measurement that will help you evaluate whether the exact problem is solved or not with the suggested corrective actions. This will also define benchmark for tracking and identification of improvement in future.
5. Action Items - This will help tracking of various action items that are identified while solving the problem. 

I'm giving an example for your easier understanding of this methodology:

Voice of Customer (VOC)	Service/Quality Area Affected	Customer Expectations	Critical To Quality (CTQ)
Customers complains that bills are either not provided to them or not delivered timely	Inconsistency of Billing cycle	Bill needs to be delivered consistently  and on time	Bill needs to be delivered on 10th of every month with a exception of +/- 1 day