Complex software is never, ever perfect.
A Lion Air Boeing Co. 737 Max 8 plane.When it comes to software flaws, it is easy to blame the engineers. But in my experience as an international software testing expert, we must look to the decisions made up the management chain to understand how and why bad software gets out the door in the first place.
Due to the nature and complexity of software, you can't test to perfect. You test to good enough. And"good enough" for software that runs your Christmas tree lights is a much lower bar than"good enough" for the airline industry. Companies like Boeing do an exceptional job of testing, but they can still make strategic errors that put us all at risk. Why? Because complex software is never, ever perfect. In the drive to make a profit, shortcuts can win the day.
The more software, the more complexity, and the greater the need to focus on quality before speed to market. Because companies are always pushing hard to get new products out the door, I've experienced situations where executives have unwittingly moved the burden of the testing to their customers. Given the nature of the airline industry, the worldwide attention on one small piece of the plane's technology, and the way that the airlines work together to keep us safe, I have every confidence that Boeing will take the right corrective actions. I'm far less confident about how well we're going to do in the self-driving car industry, however. The automotive industry operates on a completely different paradigm.
Regulatory authorities such as the U.S. Federal Aviation Authority and the French Civil Aviation Authority secured effective governance mandates and shared safety knowledge across continents. A standardized, robust black box was installed in each airplane so that the regulatory experts could hear the voice of the pilot as they tried to recover from any technical issues encountered. Standards were established and revised based on learnings from the ever-decreasing numbers of tragedies.
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