I. Richardson et al. (Eds.): EuroSPI 2005, LNCS 3792, pp. 49 – 58, 2005. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005 Quality: Attitudes and Experience Within the Irish Software Industry Brendan Keane and Ita Richardson Computer Science and Information Systems Department, University of Limerick, Castletroy, Limerick, Ireland {Brendan.Keane, Ita.Richardson}@ul.ie http://www.csis.ul.ie Abstract. The Irish software industry is facing a new challenge. Prior to this, Ireland had emerged as one of the leading software exporters in the world. Then came the downturn in the global economy, the burst of the ‘dot com’ bubble and now Ireland faces competition in the form of developing third world economies. The Irish software industry will struggle to compete with the vast, skilled but cheap labour force that these economies can offer in abundance. Is there any other field in which the Irish software industry can compete? Quality in Ireland had traditionally only been applied to the manufacturing industry. However, since the continued development of the Irish software industry, have the Irish software community taken software quality seriously enough? This paper presents the results of research conducted with members of the Irish software community to gauge their attitudes and opinions towards software quality. 1 Introduction The Irish software industry plays a vital role in the Irish economy. According to re- ports over the past number of years the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sector in Ireland employs an estimated 92,000 people within 1,300 companies, with a combined estimated turnover of €52 billion for the year 2003 [1], [2], [3]. Fo- cusing exclusively on the software industry in Ireland, it is estimated that 23,930 people were employed in 2003, a drop of 14% from the previous year. Revenue for the industry in 2003 was estimated around €14.9 billion, a 7% increase on the previ- ous year [4]. The statistics presented here vary to a degree from report to report. However, these statistics highlight the continued importance of the ICT sector to the Irish economy. Despite the downturn in the global economy optimism is still high within the Irish software community that recent success can be continued and im- proved upon. 1.1 Success Factors for the Irish Software Industry The Irish software industry has enjoyed the benefits of lucrative outsourcing and foreign direct investment (FDI), particularly from large multi-national corporations.