{"id":8903,"date":"2025-10-23T11:49:20","date_gmt":"2025-10-23T11:49:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.motopp.nl\/?p=8903"},"modified":"2025-10-23T11:49:22","modified_gmt":"2025-10-23T11:49:22","slug":"what-is-software-quality-a-conversation-with-ger-cloudt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.motopp.nl\/en\/what-is-software-quality-a-conversation-with-ger-cloudt\/","title":{"rendered":"What is Software Quality? A Conversation with Ger Cloudt."},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cQuality isn\u2019t just about processes and code. It\u2019s about behavior and mindset. About the culture that gives engineers the space to do their work well. That\u2019s where software quality begins.\u201d<\/em><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Ger Cloudt has spent decades working in the field of software, people, and organizations. He is now a Software Quality Manager at ASML, but his career began more than forty years ago, with his very first assembler program. \u201cIt turned into a spaghetti code I could hardly untangle myself,\u201d he says with a laugh. \u201cBut that was the lesson I needed to learn: without structure, there\u2019s no quality.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That lesson came early. On his second assignment, he was mentored by someone who taught him to use pseudocode and structured design. Since then, quality has been the central theme in his work, from Philips Medical Systems to NXP, Bosch, and now ASML. In 2020, he published his first book,\u00a0What is Software Quality?<\/em>, later expanded into a second edition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What\u00a0is\u00a0software quality, really?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The title of Ger\u2019s book poses a question with no single answer.
\u201cAsk a user,\u201d he says, \u201cand they\u2019ll tell you whether the software does what it\u2019s supposed to do. Ask an engineer, and the focus shifts to design, is it well structured? A project manager will talk about deadlines and budgets, while a CFO is more likely to look at return on investment.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Quality, in other words, is always\u00a0context-dependent.<\/em>\u00a0It\u2019s not just about code, it\u2019s about processes, user experience, security, culture, and ultimately, the values of an organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In his book, Ger makes this insight tangible through a framework: the\u00a01+3 Software Quality Model.\u00a0It consists of four quality types, one of which enables the other three. Organizational Quality\u00a0forms the foundation: craftsmanship, collaboration, the right mindset, a stable infrastructure, clear goals, the right tools, and mature processes. That\u2019s why, at the center of the model, you\u2019ll find the word\u00a0enables.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Below that are the three domains encountered daily in software development:<\/p>\n\n\n\n