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Growing Better Software
Implementing a quality control system is about making sure that
things will work properly, instead of hoping for the best. Ideally,
this is done by making it as difficult as possible to make
mistakes.
If we're placed in an environment that makes it impossible for us
to make mistakes, we won’t. But that won't necessarily make us
productive. If we're being tied up, we won't get any work done.
Creating a productive environment in which we cannot make
mistakes is much harder ­ a continuous effort is needed to get to
a point where mistakes are effectively prevented, but it can be
done.
Each time a mistake is found, we should ask ourselves how we
could have prevented that mistake, preferably in an automated
manner. We should then implement a mechanism that will
perform that automated mistake prevention. We, human beings,
are simply too fallible to rely on.