Many software development processes rely on quality gates. However, these quality gates often do not work as expected since they are heavyweight and provide feedback too late. As a result, quality gates fail to assure quality and cannot stop the quality erosion of software. In this talk, I explain how recent developments in the area of code collaboration platforms (Github, Gitlab, Bitbucket, …) support a more lightweight and more effective type of quality gates: These “quality doors” enable ultra short feedback cycles to an extent that would have been inconceivable a few years ago. They are facilitated through recent innovations, e.g. infrastructure as code, but also integrate well-established methods like code reviews. First industry experiences give hope that through this approach, quality assurance finally becomes an integral part of the software development process instead of being an afterthought. On a side note, I explain why I stopped using the term “technical debt”.

Florian Deissenboeck received his doctorate from Technical University Munich for his work on software quality models. Since 2005 he has been an active member of the software engineering research community and was awarded with the Most Influential Paper Award at the International Conference on Program Comprehension 2015 and the International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution 2017. In 2009 he co-founded CQSE GmbH, a company that offers the software intelligence platform Teamscale as well as innovative services that that help its customers to evaluate, control and improve the quality of their software. As head of the software auditing services, he develops new approaches for software audits and analyzes grown software systems in various industries.