Software Project Management

Chapter Five
Software Quality Management

Sem. I – 2023
SITE-AAiT

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 Software Quality Assurance

Overview
Differing expectations about software quality

Client: Meet specifications within the contract terms

End-user: Do job better, faster, easier
Developer: Few defects at delivery, faster development, higher
productivity
Maintainer: Understandable, testable, modifiable
Quality is:

What customers look for in any product

What customers think it is; perceive it to be or experience it to be
What is perceived as high or low depending upon the usefulness and
utility of the product.
Conformance to requirement
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 Software Quality Assurance

Overview

Quality is customer driven

Begins with customer(specification) and Ends with customer(judgment)

Stretches beyond stated requirements
Involves conformance to legal requirements
Involves delivering more than expectations and delighting the customer
 Software Quality Assurance

Quality Characteristics:
Product Operations
Usability
Security
Efficiency
Correctness
Reliability
Product Revision
Maintainability
Adaptability
Expandability
Product Transition
Reusability
Portability
Interoperability 4
 Software Quality Assurance

Software Quality Assurance Plan

Quality can’t be assured unless it can be well defined, planned for and
measured.
To assure quality SQAP is needed.
SQAP is aimed at
Giving the confidence to developers and the customers that the
requirements will be met.
Producing the final product of satisfactory quality
Outlining the different standards, procedures and methodologies and
metrics to be used.

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 Software Quality Assurance

Process and Product Quality

Quality of product is influenced by quality of process
Practical process quality:

Define process standards such as how reviews should be conducted, etc

Monitor the development process to ensure that standards are being
followed
Don’t use inappropriate practices simply because standards have been
established

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 Software Quality Assurance

Quality Management Activities

Quality Planning
Select applicable procedures and standards for a particular project and
how to satisfy those standards.
The main outputs
Quality management plan
Quality metrics
A metric is a standard of measurement. For instance, failure rates
of a product, availability of product or services
Quality checklists
Sets out the desired product qualities and how these are assessed and
defines the most significant quality attributes
Should define the quality assessment process
Should set out which organizational standards should be applied and
where necessary, define new standards to be used
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 Software Quality Assurance

Quality Management Activities …

Quality Assurance

Includes all of the activities related to satisfying the relevant quality

standards.
Another goal of quality assurance is continuous quality management.
The main outputs:
Requested changes
Recommended corrective actions
Updates of the above and quality management plan

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 Software Quality Assurance

Quality Management Activities …

Quality Control

monitors that procedures and standards are followed

The main outputs:
Acceptance decision- accepted/rejected
Rework-action taken to bring rejected items into compliance with
specifications
Process Adjustments - correct or prevent further quality problems
based on quality control managements
 Software Quality Assurance

Quality Control Tools and Techs

The tools and techniques include

Seven Basic Quality Tools

Statistical Sampling
Six Sigma
Seven Basic Quality tools are

Cause -and- Effect Diagrams

Help you find the root cause
Known as fishbone or Ishikawa diagrams
Commonly used in product design and quality defect prevention
Cause for imperfection is a source for variation.
Causes are categorized into five People, Methods, Machines and
Materials, Measurements, and the Environment.
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 Software Quality Assurance

Seven basic quality tools …

Check Sheet

A form used to collect data at real time

Quantitative (tally sheet) and qualitative
Employ a heading that answers Five Ws

Five Ws

Who filled out the check sheet

What was collected (what each check represents, an identifying
batch or lot number)
Where the collection took place (facility, room, apparatus)
When the collection took place (hour, shift, day of the week)
Why the data were collected
 Software Quality Assurance

Quality Control Tools and Techs

Seven basic quality tools …

Control Chart (A.K.A, Shewhart Charts)

Helps to determine the state of control process

Histogram: A histogram is a graphical representation of the distribution

of numerical data.

Pareto Chart : contains both bars and a line graph, where individual
values are represented in descending order by bars, and the cumulative
total is represented by the line.

Scatter Diagram: used either when one continuous variable that is under
the control of the experimenter and the other depends on it or when both
continuous variables are independent 12
 Software Quality Assurance

Quality Control Tools and Techs

Seven basic quality tools …

Stratification (flow chart)

when subpopulations within an overall population vary.

Six Sigma
Data driven approach and methodology for eliminating defects (driving
toward six standard deviations between the mean and the nearest
specification limit)
 Software Quality Assurance

Quality Assurance and Standards

Standards are key to effective quality management
They may be international, national, organizational or project standards
Product standards define characteristics that all components should exhibit eg,
common programming style
Process standards define how the software process should be enacted
Importance of Standards
Encapsulation of best practices- avoids repetition of past mistakes
They are framework for quality assurance processes-they involve
checking compliance to standards
They provide continuity- new staff can understand the organization by
understanding the standards

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 Software Quality Assurance

Product and Process Standards

Product standards Process standards
Review report form Review process
Docs structure Docs process
Plan format Plan approval process
Change request form, etc Change control process, etc
Documentation Standards
Documentations are the tangible manifestation of the software
Documentation process standards
concerned with how documents should be developed, validated and
maintained
Document standards
Concerned with document contents, structure and appearance
Document interchange standards
Concerned with the compatibility of electronics documents 15
 Software Quality Assurance

Documentation Process

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 Software Quality Assurance

Types of Documentation Standards

Document identification standards
How documents are uniquely identified
Document structure standards
Define Standard structure for project documents
Document presentation standards
Define fonts and styles, use of logos, etc
Document update standards
Define how changes from previous versions are reflected in a document

Document Interchange Standards

Allow electronic documents to be exchanged
Define conventions for different documents produced on different computers
Need for archiving
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 Software Quality Assurance

Quality Plan
Sets out the desired product qualities and how these are assessed and defines
the most significant quality attributes

Should define the quality assessment process

Should set out which organizational standards should be applied and where
necessary, define new standards to be used
 Software Quality Assurance

Approaches of Quality Control

Involves checking the software development process to ensure that procedures
and standards are being followed
Two approaches to quality control
Quality reviews
Testing
Quality reviews
Principal method of validating the quality of a process or product
A team examines part or all of a process or system and its documentation
to find potential problem
Types of review:
Inspections for defect removal (product)
Reviews for progress assessment (prod., process)
Quality reviews (product, standards)

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 Software Quality Assurance

Quality Reviews …
Review Process
Identify what to review
Plan the review
Select review techniques
Identify the review team
Select appropriate review checklist
Decide how much to review
Perform the review
Close the review

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 Software Quality Assurance

Testing
Plays a critical role in quality assurance
Dynamic method for verification and validation
Two approaches to testing: Functional and structural
In functional testing/black box testing:
Internal logic is not considered
Test cases are decided from the functional specifications

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 Software Quality Assurance

Testing…
In structural testing/white box testing:
Internal logic are considered
Test cases are decided on the internal structure
Levels of testing:
Unit testing -goal is to test module code
Integration testing -goal is to test system design through combination
of modules
System testing-goal is to test the entire system against the
requirements
Acceptance testing- testing-goal is to test the entire system against the
requirements by the client
 Software Quality Assurance

Test plan
Basic document guiding the entire testing process
Specifies the levels of testing and the units that need to be tested
For each units:
Test cases are specified
test cases are executed and various reports are produced:
Test log
Test summary
Error reports

Prepare SQAP for your project

Due date: two weeks

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 SQAP Template
1. Introduction
1.1 purpose
1.2 scope
2. Roles and responsibilities
3. Documentation
3.1 documents to be produced and their brief descriptions
4. Standards and procedures
4.1 Standards
4.1.1 Documents
4.1.2 Coding
4.1.3 Testing
4.1.4 document and version control
4.1.5 Tools
4.2 Procedures/processes
4.2.1 Reviews
4.2.2 Testing
4.2.3 Documentation