True, software is not a process. Software can help working in conformity with a process.
Having a process does not necessarily produce good outcomes in the sense of customer satisfaction.
A good example is the closure (‘archived’) of reports of confirmed bugs when no one took care of it and fixed it in two years after it has been verified and confirmed. It is not checked if the bug still exists, so the is no factual evidence that it is no longer in the system at the time of closure of the concerned reports.
This process may not be adequate, except the case where customer satisfaction is not the intended outcome.
A coherent set of processes can be achieved by setting up a Quality Management System (QMS). ISO 9001 could be a framework and/or an industry-specific ISO, as @thorstenstueker suggested. A Quality Manager (QM) is in charge of putting such a system in place, assuring continued compliance and handling of non-compliance through corrective actions.
Writing this looks like carrying beer to the pub, but this common knowledge did not get its due attention in some remote place of the planet.
I used-to-be an ISO 9001 auditor, and also created documentation and many manuals for the ISO quality process. Having a good quality system is definitely a challenge and must be a decision that all parts of the company participates and works with.
Once companies pass their first ISO 9001 audit, they soon realize that this more than just an ‘exam’ that needs to be ‘passed’. It is a complete quality system that is a corporate and philosophical business shift.
Internal documentation and planning are key steps in a QA system, and it takes a substantial amount of time to created and then to maintain. Yes, ISO 9001 is worth it, and does take alot of effort to implement. 
Edit: There were some companies that passed the ISO 9001 process easily, and there were other companies that just couldn’t understand what was involved with quality management. QA is well worth the continuous effort, if implemented correctly.
Hey eugenedakin that’s true for 9001 and also for 13485. For me the most challenging thing was to implement the development. Because it is so heavy to implement agile development and because you have to change your thinking about it and that of all developers. But. The Software became better. While there is a control behind and processes which showing me that there is the need of changes when something runs into the wrong direction. Without QMS I would not even get that there is something running out of best practice. For a Software Vendor it is a MUST have in my eyes.
Comes in change management.
Speaking of quality systems, ISO-9001 is relatively a pretty low bar for anyone coming from a cGMP environment from what I have seen.
My employer (a small company) got certified for 9001 a few months ago… and next we a going for 13485…AND starting to implement an ERP system simultaneously…
Next 6-8 months will be fun… NOT!
-Karen
What are you really frustrated with?
It is with Xojo as a development tool or with Xojo Forums?
The most are getting to that point not because of the Development tool but because of it’s Bugs and the behavior of the vendor with the bug fixing strategy. All Tools having Bugs. But then there are methods and ways to get rid of them.
First one is: incubator Versions which are helping to find many of them before releasing.
Second is: beta versions for testing. While the incubator can used for preproduction while it has no feature changes the beta has. So that comes to a three releasing lines tree. An LTS with a support range of one, two or three years with only Bugfixings and Sec updates. Beta for testers only and incubator for the devs which want to develop new products with the latest features but possibly many bugs.
What would this be in case of Xojo? Today we have the situation that a new Version for the API for example will be released from one day to the other and Updates for the old release will not be provided anymore. And then, within this new version, changes for API, Syntax, command names and so on are possible and will come with a big chance.
If Xojo would release for example 2019r3.2 as LTS there would be the LTS and Bugfixes. The 2020 would be released in 2020 as Beta. Possibly it would be today in incubator status and we would have in end of 23 or beginning of 24 next lots version.
Behaving like that would bring much more silence and reliability for the devs. Remember: Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 was a change where it even was in many cases not possible to recompile the project and also in a big amount of cases it was not even possible to rewrite the old projects in Web 2.0.
This is the situation until today. If there would be an incubator in 2020 und the knowledge: okay in 2024 this will be ended up and the App has to be rewritten for the Web 2.0 it would make no problem cause the timeline would be long enough to do that. But deprecating from today in the morning until lunchtime without the knowledge of deprecation of the version and setting it out of support is dramatically for Developers.
Joint the LTS drive like I described would result in a complete different situation. Bugs can be fixed with much more time and the drama reaction of the entire community would be gone. The docs would be available for older versions and so on.
You see: there are possible ways to hold it much more silent and reliable for the devs. And that would be the professional behavior. Look at Java. You have always before a Version an Incubator. Always. And you have all few years LTS Versions which are supported over years. That makes it more comfortable for the customers and the vendor
Please remind me of what’s a LTS, so I can understand your answer.
LTC-Version: Long Term support Version.
from Wikipedia:
long term support
LTS stands for long term support. Here, support means that throughout the lifetime of a release there is a commitment to update, patch and maintain the software. For an LTS, there is a shorter development cycle, where engineers and contributors add to the body of the release.
Thanks. I actually searched for LTS but got too much unrelated results.
The fact that my thread was closed. Xojo seem incapable of permitting reasonable, non aggressive, conversations on their forums. The whole company is starting to feel overly controlling and deaf to their users.
They need to get especially that control over the communication on that forum while new customers reading first the forum before they decide to buy (often) and that makes it really hard to accept that negative stuffs are inside. They can’t leave it there and their communication outside of the forum is not besser. They are mostly trying to ignore. When I ended E Mails with my Bug description I got the Answer: use Feedback. When I answered: okay but Feedback for Linus is not working at the moment while it has a Bug they said: reports that on feedback. What do you believe why I was so freaking out in the forum? It had a story before.
This kind of communication is absolute controlled and that works only when you stop conversations like that immediately and - in this case happened - delisting it. Why? While it let’s everybody see that something is not really working correct in that chain. And makes it nearly impossible to tell the people: we are the best.
Looking on the Bugs in their Bugtracker shows also: over 6000 open Bugs and that is climbing up. That makes the situation to a problem. What ever people are thinking and believing: they can not fix them. With a small team. new feature Development and need to fix 6400 Bugs it is impossible. Some of them are 9 years old and still actual. So I believe that it is not so that we will see a fast fixing of this bugs. And many of them are showstoppers. So the Xojo team has too much to do, has to fix too many bugs in a short time. And the list is still growing up. So looking on the Bugtracker and search for last updated Bugs we will find a few solutions and many Bugs with no fix and a few remaining in Xojo frameworks more than 10 years. That makes it really complex while the amount of bugs makes it hard to priorize.
Vendors like Oracle can handle that better, or Mysql which has the same amount of bugs but all are relatively new. And a big amount are not bugs while wrong handling by user. Here we have another situation. For example: Mouse Wheel functionality can not be wrong handled by user. Scaling issues can’t also. So the bug handling became a bit impossible. They try to fight against but at the end: all of us know that the amount of bugs will not decrease in near future of 5 years.
Then, writing about it in Forum makes that a bit complex. While writing about a Bug which is showstopper it shows to the costumers (the ones which will be customers also) that there is some trouble ahead.
When then in that situation people complaining about a decision that some videos from their conference will cost 200 Bucks there is a misreaction programmed in front. While that makes the view on the company also even more to a company which wants only one thing: the customers money. But please no Support (which is in the most cases done by other customers) and please no critics.
And so ends the story which will catch everyone one time. And you have to decide: is that the right tool for me or is it not. Nothing else you can do while they close every free conversation about Bugs or pricing or other company decisions. They have in this case on their Websites the absolute power.