Quality is Free

In a world where software teams are pushed to deliver faster with limited resources, true quality often feels like a luxury. But what if quality actually saves money? There is a competitive advantage to quality software which is hard to attain as system complexity grows. There is a way though—almost all the action taken in software development can be modified, without additional cost, to create quality.

Quality is Free: How Engineering Leaders Improve Software Quality Without Blowing the Budget reveals practical strategies used by engineering leaders to cut waste, lower defects, and create durable systems without raising costs or team size. The book urges readers to rethink software development with a focus on smart, long-term choices.

Drawing from decades of experience transforming teams in finance, ecommerce, and enterprise software, Stephen Rylander shows how smart quality practices pay for themselves through lower rework, faster delivery, and more focused teams.

This book is perfect for developers, engineering managers, product managers, tech leads, VPs of engineering, and anyone involved in software teams.

About the Author

Stephen values teamwork and pragmatic approaches to innovation. With extensive experience in software engineering, architecture, quality management, and leadership across finance, e-commerce, entertainment, and risk domains, he currently leads global engineering at DFIN, developing industry-leading financial software for some of the world’s largest financial service customers and capital markets. Previously, he managed engineering and quality for Morningstar's data, retirement, and investor products. Stephen authored Patterns of Software Construction, was an early adopter of continuous integration patterns, a firm advocate for strong engineering fundamentals, and has contributed to numerous modernization projects.

Stephen lives outside of Chicago with his beautiful wife, daughter, son, two cats and an amazing Portuguese Waterdog. He loves software, reading, 80’s comedies and strong, dark coffee.