The more I think about it, the more astonished I become. Maintenance contracts for (bespoke) software: Buying insurance to cover against the possibility that the software doesn’t work.
I know the consumer electronics industry does the same, and I always baulk at the idea of spending an extra fifty quid in case the manufacturer cocked up. I wonder what percentage of purchasers buy the insurance? And I wonder what percentage of goods are sent back for repairs? Perhaps the price could be increased by 10% and all defects fixed for free. Or perhaps the manufacturer could invest a little in defect prevention.
It seems to me that software maintenance contracts are an addiction. Software houses undercut each other to win bids, and then rely on the insurance deal to claw back some profits. So no-one is incentivised to improve their performance, and in fact the set-up works directly against software quality. Perhaps it’s time now to break that addiction…
If a software house were able to offer to fix all defects for free, would that give them enough of a market advantage to pay for the investment needed to prevent those defects? Is “zero defects or we fix it for free” a viable vision? (Does any software house offer that already?) And how many software companies would have to do it before the buyer’s expectations evolved to match?
As an industry, do we now know enough to enable a few software houses to compete on the basis of quality?