Applicability of Economics to QA
Years ago, I started listening to Russ Roberts' excellent podcast EconTalk ( http://www.econtalk.org ), and the more I've listened to it, the more I've come to understand that although the origins of economics and the study of quality may be different, the practice is very, very similar. What do we measure? We face a constant struggle trying to measure the right variables, and what is "right" changes over time. In economics, it seems like new indicators become popular all the time. After the Great Depression, the concept of a nation's Gross Domestic Product rose in popularity as economists worked on trying to explain how nations were affected by the depression, and how they might be able to avoid similar events in the future. However, GDP did nothing to predict the "Great Recession" of 2007-2009, and in fact trailed the crisis by a considerable time. We face similar issues with quality. Production or build test failure rates come to us p...