The second volume of the Quality Software series on leanpub, published in 2010, investigates how and why software projects encounter serious difficulty. Drawing on material reorganized from the original QSM volumes — particularly qsm-vol1-systems-thinking-1992 and qsm-vol2-first-order-measurement-1993 — Weinberg uses stories, graphs, and Diagrams of Effects to trace the systemic patterns that cause software organizations to fail even when individuals are competent and well-intentioned.
A central analytical tool is the Diagram of Effects, which maps the causal loops and feedback mechanisms that produce characteristic organizational pathologies. Weinberg shows how pressure to deliver leads to shortcuts, which degrade quality, which generates more pressure — a reinforcing loop that organizations in lower cultural-patterns-of-software-organizations patterns often cannot break because they lack the observational discipline to see the loop clearly, let alone interrupt it.
The volume pays particular attention to how different cultural patterns respond to errors and failures. Pattern 1 organizations may suppress error information, Pattern 2 organizations may respond to errors with blame, while Pattern 3 organizations begin to develop systematic response processes. The pattern at which an organization operates substantially determines whether failures become learning events or reputation-damaging crises.
This reorganization of material from the original dorset-house-publishing QSM series reflects Weinberg's continued engagement, during his late-career-teaching-and-self-publishing-2000-2018 phase, with the central questions of the quality-software-management-framework: what makes software organizations succeed or fail, and what can be changed.