It’s a very interesting question always “Did you come across Bug free Sofware” in your lifetime. Whenever I ask this question to anyone from IT industry, they think very hard and start with slight nodding of head left to right and the phase of nodding increases rapidly. This is an outcome of typical human behavior. If this question be asked part of any “Appraisal” meeting, the answer from the same person would have been totally different. He could pledge that the software he delivered is the best and of world-class quality, some times more than six sigma level too :)
Been in IT industry for a decade, even I use to think a lot about “Bug Free Software”. If you ask anybody involved in SDLC, a BUG in their definition would be like “any deviation from the requirement”. Does the “Requirements” don’t carry a bug on its own…that could be another question.In my experience if you start digging for the real meaning of Bug, which would end up as an item directly related to the usability of the software. Any Bug in shipped software might be collective responsibility of the team, but QA guys would take more hit than others.
One more myth prevails in the IT industry is that; we could reach the state of “Bug Free Software” once the technology improves. Come mon pals; you know better on, where IT industry is now. More than 40 years old industry and some new ideas/concepts are being introduced every minute in this global village. Does “Defect Density” reduced in any of your projects. We cant stop bugs, but we could find a way to reduce them.
Software systems are getting complex day by day. Every application is trying to support the customer with maximum number of functionality/features in a single page. Some times I could correlate these kind of action similar to, me dumped with 5 subjects home work in a single day in my school.
To Conclude:
1) Bug Free Software is a “Concept” but not a “State”
2) The concept of bug free software itself is the outcome of imperfect thinking and short comings in understanding of software and bugs
3) Usable software with no customer complaints are all “Bug Free Software”
4) Take the driver sheet to estimate the software in terms of the solution it provides, not about “Bug” it carries
5) Be Proud to say that the software you shipped is always “Bug Free” [ Trust me pals :)]
