Explain why high quality software process should lead to high quality software products.
Answers
1. Chapter 24 - Quality Management Chapter 24 Quality management 110/12/2014
2. Topics covered Software quality Software standards Reviews and inspections Quality management and agile development Software measurement Chapter 24 Quality management 210/12/2014
3. Software quality management Concerned with ensuring that the required level of quality is achieved in a software product. Three principal concerns: At the organizational level, quality management is concerned with establishing a framework of organizational processes and standards that will lead to high-quality software. At the project level, quality management involves the application of specific quality processes and checking that these planned processes have been followed. At the project level, quality management is also concerned with establishing a quality plan for a project. The quality plan should set out the quality goals for the project and define what processes and standards are to be used. Chapter 24 Quality management 310/12/2014
4. Quality management activities Quality management provides an independent check on the software development process. The quality management process checks the project deliverables to ensure that they are consistent with organizational standards and goals The quality team should be independent from the development team so that they can take an objective view of the software. This allows them to report on software quality without being influenced by software development issues. Chapter 24 Quality management 410/12/2014
5. Quality management and software development Chapter 24 Quality management 510/12/2014
6. Quality planning A quality plan sets out the desired product qualities and how these are assessed and defines the most significant quality attributes. The quality plan should define the quality assessment process. It should set out which organisational standards should be applied and, where necessary, define new standards to be used. Chapter 24 Quality management 610/12/2014
7. Quality plans Quality plan structure Product introduction; Product plans; Process descriptions; Quality goals; Risks and risk management. Quality plans should be short, succinct documents If they are too long, no-one will read them. Chapter 24 Quality management 710/12/2014
8. Scope of quality management Quality management is particularly important for large, complex systems. The quality documentation is a record of progress and supports continuity of development as the development team changes. For smaller systems, quality management needs less documentation and should focus on establishing a quality culture. Techniques have to evolve when agile development is used. Chapter 24 Quality management 810/12/2014
9. Software quality 10/12/2014 Chapter 24 Quality management 9
10. Software quality Quality, simplistically, means that a product should meet its specification. This is problematical for software systems There is a tension between customer quality requirements (efficiency, reliability, etc.) and developer quality requirements (maintainability, reusability, etc.); Some quality requirements are difficult to specify in an unambiguous way; Software specifications are usually incomplete and often inconsistent. The focus may be ‘fitness for purpose’ rather than specification conformance. Chapter 24 Quality management 1010/12/2014