Why Hardware Reliability and Software Quality Improvement Efforts Fail

This chapter considers how poor execution or poor follow‐up can cause the reliability effort to break down. Commitment to a reliability program must come from the top management. Making a commitment and failing to stay the course is a major reason companies fail. Regarding staffing, inadequate resources falls into two different categories. The first category is too few resources. The second is the wrong resources. The impact to software quality is more severe when the software staff does not include personnel with adequate skills. Product reliability testing has evolved over the years. There has been temperature testing, vibration testing, shock testing, and so on. Operating the product during stress testing will require test equipment and may require test software. Transforming the product development process to achieve higher hardware reliability and improved customer satisfaction requires the implementation of many strategies.