Quality Management

ensuring that the required level of quality is achieved in a software product

Involves defining appropriate quality standards and procedures and ensuring that these are followed.

Should aim to develop a ‘quality culture’ where quality is seen as everyone’s responsibility

means that a product should meet its specification

This is problematical for software systems

tension between customer quality requirements and developer quality requirements

Some quality requirements are difficult to specify in an unambiguous way

Software specifications are usually incomplete and often inconsistent

complex systems and small systems

The quality of a developed SW is influenced by the quality of the production process

there is a very complex and poorly
understood relationship between them

imposing inappropriate process standards could reduce the product quality

Process-based quality

a record of progress

supports continuity of development as the development team changes

Quality Assurance

Establish organisational procedures and standards for quality.

QA and standards

standards are the key to effective Q management

international, national, organizational or project standards

Product std define characteristics that
all components should exhibit (common
programming style, documentation
templates)

Process std. define the work process (activities)

imortance of stds

Encapsulation of best practice (avoids past mistakes)

framework for quality assurance processes

provide continuity (new staff can understand the org. by understanding the used standards

Quality Planning

Select particular project's procedures and standards and modify these as required

aquality plan

sets out the desired product qualities, how these are assessed and defines quality attributes.

SW quality attributes

should set out which organisational standards should be applied and define new standards to be used.

Quality Control

checking the SW development process to ensure that procedures and standards are being followed

two approaches

quality reviews

Inspections for defect removal

Reviews for progress assessment

Code, designs, specifications, test plans, standards, etc. can all be reviewed

Automated software assessment and software measurement (testing)