Quality

Defined before the work, at the handoff, by the one who will receive it — and tested at the milestone under real load.

Quality is a design decision, not an inspection. The receiver writes what makes the work acceptable; the doer checks it before handing it over; at the Milestone the whole is tested under the conditions it will actually meet, not under the conditions that are convenient to test. Put the definition first and nothing later can trade it away; put it last and it becomes whatever the schedule left room for.

It is load-bearing because it is where a target stops being negotiable. Budget is a design criterion and cost flexes through invention, but target quality is not lowered — the design changes until the number and the standard can both be met. Waiving quality quietly is how a body arrives at its milestone with something that passes review and fails in use, which is the expensive kind of failure and the kind that teaches slowest.

Two disciplines keep it honest. The handoff, because the successor is the customer and every trade is responsible for confirming that what came before it meets the standard. And the defect, because every miss is logged the day it happens and closed only when its fix sits where future work will meet it — a first run study takes the first instance of a repeated piece of work and proves the method before it is repeated a hundred times.

Also called: Target Quality · First Run Studies Stands on: Conditions of satisfaction · Design To The Goal Opens onto: A3 Reports · Every Defect Is A Gift · The gap · Continuous Improvement In play: table · Home · beyond Sources: The LIØNSBERG Operating System (book, draft v0) §13 · The LIØNSBERG Pattern Language — Synthesized (Elements 10 and 12; First Run Studies named, body not yet written) · The Economic Case For IPD (wiki root page, unmarked) · The DNA of Heaven, Part VII — lionsberg.wiki page name: Quality Open: First Run Studies is named in the Pattern Language inventory without a page of its own.