Context: Critical software systems developed for the government continue to be of lower quality than expected, despite extensive literature describing best practices in software engineering. Goal: We wanted to better understand the extent of certain issues in the field and the relationship to software quality. Method: We surveyed fifty software development professionals and asked about practices and barriers in the field and the resulting software quality. Results: There is evidence of certain problematic issues for developers and specific quality characteristics that seem to be affected. Conclusions: This motivates future work to address the most problematic barriers and issues impacting software quality.

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