Software Quality Assurance
ABSTRACT
High complexity, invisibility of the product and opportunity to detect the defects provided the uniqueness which will meet the challenges for the development and operation of quality assurance for software. This paper provides a brief introduction to software quality assurance and discuses about the software quality metrics and their limitations.
Keywords: SQA (software Quality Assurance), software quality metrics, process metrics, product metrics
INTRODUCTION
Definition: Software Quality Assurance is a set of activities designed to evaluate the process by which the products are developed or manufactured. Contrast with quality control. [1]
Software Quality assurance is an important aspect of product development. Unlike the other engineering disciplines, such as manufacturing and hardware software quality assurance does not have control. [2]
The main objectives of SQA are it assures acceptable levels of confidence, conformance to functional technical requirements. It assures the acceptable levels of confidence to managerial scheduling and budgets requirements. It assures the software development and control processes described in the project's Management Plan are correctly carried out and that the project's procedures and standards are followed. SQA assures that clear and achievable standards exist and then evaluates the software product to the established standards.
[3]Kurt F. Fischer identified the following eight QA functions to assure sufficient planning, reporting, and control to affect the development of software products which meet their contractual requirements.
1. Initial quality planning
2. Development of software standards
and procedures
3. Development of quality assurance
tools
4. Conduct of audits and reviews
5. Inspection and surveillance of
formal tests
6. Configuration verifications
7. Management of the discrepancy
reporting system
8. Retention of QA records
The hierarchy of SQA unit starts with the SQA unit head at the top and his planning tasks are preparing annual activity program and budget for the SQA unit, planning of the organizations software quality management system.
The management tasks include monitoring implementation of the annual SQA activities of a program appointing SQA members.
[4]Fletcher J. Buckley identifies the three major roles of an SQA professional as
The first SQA role is Information Gatherer, who looks across many projects to provide management with the information it needs to make decisions among economic, marketing, legal, quality, and scheduling conflicts.
Business requirements are gathered in this stage. This stage is the main focus of the project managers and stake holders. It is performed by the senior members of the team with inputs from the customer, the sales department, market surveys and domain experts in the industry. This information is then used to plan the main project approach and to conduct product feasibility study in the economical, operational and technical areas. You identify needs of the software. This is the vital stage, because bad investigation may lead to the project
The IQA must establish the planning process and plan for internal quality assurance; they must plan the activity, carry it out, make a decision and provide feedback.
...arations needed during implementation of the project while the final phase is meant for overall evaluation.
? Operations and Special Projects Coordinator manages the special programs organized by the agency and ensures the communication between employees and higher authority.
Quality Planning – As a first step to developing the QP, we will undertake quality planning. Quality planning will have as its objectives the identification of quality specifications and of how to meet these specifications. To accomplish these objectives, we will analyze inputs from which to derive a quality baseline and then produce artifacts that will support the execution of the QP. We will undertake quality planning immediately after award, in concurrence with other project planning activities. Quality planning activities and milestones will be incorporated into the overall project management plan.
Quality assessment and quality assurance are often found together in health care quality literature. However, these terms are not always differentiated appropriately. Quality assessment is a measurement of quality against an establish standard (Shi & Singh, 2015). The measurement of quality includes the process of describing how quality is determined, identification of specific indicators to be measured, and collection of data for the measurement, statistical analysis, and explanation of the results (Shi & Singh, 2015). Quality assurance is included with quality assurance and is the process of implementing quality through continuous assessment and using the results from the assessments for continuous improvement (Shi & Singh, 2015).
This quality assurance system does not slow down production, but instead allows quality controllers to evaluate and determine quality needs or process improvements. Having appropriate testing and performance evaluations of the production cycle ensures that a high quality product is delivered to consumers and minimizes the risk of defects. Samsung will focus on improving their quality assurance process in light of the issues they had with the Note 7 battery and implement these quality controls as part of the production cycle of this new
Early fixing of errors not only helps save cost but also helps in mitigating the various risks associated with software development and it also helps in improving and monitoring quality of the system etc. It has been proven that the cost to identify and mitigate the errors in the early stages of development of a software will be hundred times less than the cost of removing an error in the software system that has been distributed among hundreds of
Scope: The first document a project manager will put together with his team members is the sco...
After the systems planning is complete, the next course of action is the systems analysis phase. This phase includes defining the requirements of the system. This means that the team must conclude what the system needs to do in order to satisfy the users. This is done by forming a requirements...
Wang, Y., Francis, K., & Sun, J. (2014). Security investment in aviation industry: A longitudinal analysis. Industrial Management & Data Systems.114 (2):276-291.
- clarify key point and success responsibilities of the role and review the job responds
Quality is one of the most important components of application development and an integral part of the project process to ensure that errors are not made while
Software development follows a specific life cycle that starts with designing a solution to a problem and implementing it. Software testing is part of this software life cycle that involves verifying if each unit implemented meets the specifications of the design. Even with careful testing of hundreds or thousands of variables and code statements, users of software find bugs. “Software testing is arguably the least understood part of the development process” and is also a “time-consuming process that requires technical sophistication and proper planning” (Whittaker 71) It is important to comprehend this concept by understanding the different characteristics and aspects of software testing, and then to examine the techniques, procedures and tools used to apply this concept. This will enable the user to realize the problems faced by software testers and the importance of software testing.
In response to Bologna Process and taking measures to promote quality assurance, Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Area (thereafter ESG) was published in 2005. However, the permeation of ESG remains limited on the higher education institutional (HEIs) level; conflicts emerged between institution administration and local authorities on how to enhance institutional quality culture; ESG has not been updated to follow the trends in higher education system. To solve these problems, I propose building monetary policy under a European Union Commission that requires the institution and quality assurance agencies (thereafter QAA) to reach the ESG of quality assurance to obtain certain financial resources; raising quality standards to a super-national level; analyzing the reforms and trends in higher education over the past years and identifying standards and guidelines that can be applied.