How do you make great quality Software products?

Plato, Socrates, Aristotle all had their opinions. The definition of quality has been refined over the years and has recently centered around four main areas.

• Excellence in some attribute of an object or action (Its design, materials used, etc )
• Value derived by a person observing or experiencing some object or action
• Conformance by the object or action to some Standard or Specifications
• An object or action Meeting or Exceeding Customers expectations which implies fitness for purpose and use

Its easy for a group of people to agree on the "quality" of a physical product but its not so easy to agree on the "quality" of non physical products such as services or software systems.

A large part of a Software system is hidden from view. Users only get to experience the end result. So you cant "readily "see" the attributes of quality in a system.  

Quality is an "emergent" attribute. When Mozart, Picasso and  Federer were born they showed some of the attributes of being a great composer, painter or tennis player but so did hundreds of other composers, painters and tennis players. Their greatness emerged over time after considerable effort and by continuously improving their skills and capability . All three exhibited the qualities of being agile , adaptive and evolutionary in their approach to their work. So it is with good software systems.

The quality and greatness of something including software systems is always there latent but you have to add and remove "stuff" to enable this quality to breathe and emerge else it remains imprisoned a victim of our approach to life and work