SOFTWARE MAINTENACE AND

QUALITY ASSURANCE
LECTURE 4: COMPONENTS OF THE SQA
SYSTEM

Agreen AlBaqal
Software Engineering
Spring Semester 2024
 Topics
§ The SQA system
§ Pre-project component
§ Software project life cycle components
§ Infrastructure components for error prevention and
improvement
§ Management SOA components
§ SOA standards, system certification, and assessment
components
 Topics
§ Organizing for SQA
§ Considerations guiding construction of an
organization's SQA system
 The SQA system-an SQA architecure

Ø Software is…
High complexity.
Invisible product.
Hard to search and fix defect(bug).

Ø SQAsystem components can be

classified into sixclasses:
The SQA system SQAsystemcomponentscanbe
classified into six classes
 1. Pre-Project components

resources required
 2. Components of project life cycle
activities assessment
–Reviews
–Expert opinions
–Software testing.

Operation
maintenance
 3. Components of infrastructure
error prevention and imporivement

to eliminate or at least
reduce the rate of errors
4. Components of software quality
management
prevent or minimize
schedule and
budget failuresand their
outcomes.
5. Components of standardization
certification, and SQA ystem assessment
The main objectives of (5.)
standards
Ø utilization of international
professional knowledge.

Ø improvement of coordination of the

organizational quality systems with
other organizations.

Ø assessment of the achievements of

quality systems according to a common
scale.
6-
Organizing for SQA – the human
components
initiate and support
the implementation
of SQA components,
detect deviations
fromSQA
procedures and
methodology, and
suggest
improvements.
The SQA system
 Pre-Project components-contract
review
Ø Contract- the development unit is committed to an
agreed-upon functional specification, budget and schedule.

Ø examination of…
§ the project proposal draft.
§ the contract drafts.
Contract review activities (1/2)

Ø Clarification of the customer’s requirements

Ø Review of the project’s schedule and

resource requirement estimates

Ø Evaluation of the professional staff’s

capacity to carry out the proposed project
 Contract review activies (2/2)

Ø Evaluation of the customer’s capacity to

fulfill his obligations

Ø Evaluation of development risks.

 Pre project components
-Development and Quality plans
a plan is prepared of the project (“development
plan”) and its integrated quality assurance
activities (“quality plan”).These plans include
additional details and needed revisions based
on prior plans that provided the basis for the
current proposal andcontract.

It is quite common for several months to pass

between the tender submission and the
signing of the contract.
The main issues treated in the
project development plan are:
Ø Schedules
Ø Required manpower and hardware resources
Ø Risk evaluations
Ø Organizational issues:team members,
subcontractors andpartnerships
Ø Project methodology, development
tools, etc.
Ø Software reuseplans.
The main issues treated in the
project development plan are:
Ø Quality goals, expressed in the
appropriate measurable terms

Ø Criteria for starting and ending each

project stage

Ø Lists of reviews, tests, and other

scheduled verification and validation
activities.
The SQA system
 Software project life cycle components

Ø Reviews

Ø Expert opinions

Ø Software testing

Ø Software maintenance

Ø Assurance of the quality of the external

participants’ work
 Reviews

Ø The design phase of the development process

produces a variety of documents. The printed
products include design reports, software test
documents, software installation plans and software
manuals,among others.
Reviews can be categorizedas

§ formal design reviews(DRs)

§ peer reviews.
 Formal design reviews (DRs)

Ø The committees are composed of senior

professionals, including the project leader
and, usually, the department manager, the
chief software engineer, and heads of
other related departments.

Ø The DR report itself includes a list of

required corrections (termed “action
items”).
 Formal design reviews (DRs)
Ø When a design review committee sits in order to decide
upon the continuation of the work completed so far, one
of the following options is usually open for
consideration:
§ Immediate approval of the DR document and continuation to
the next developmentphase.

§ Approval to proceed to the next development phase after all

the action items have been completed and inspected by the
committee’s representative.

§ An additional DR is required and scheduled to take place after

all the action items have been completed and inspected by the
committee’s representative.
Peer reviews

Ø Peer reviews (inspections and

walkthroughs) are directed at reviewing
short documents, chapters or parts of a
report, a coded printout of a software
module.

Ø usually, the reviewers are all peers,

not superiors, who provide
professional assistance to
colleagues.
Peer reviews

Ø The main objective of inspections and

walkthroughs is to detect as many design
and programming faults aspossible.

Ø The output is a list of detected faults and,

for inspections, also a defect summary
and statistics to be used as a database for
reviewing and improving development
methods.
 Expert options

Ø Expert opinions support quality

assessment efforts by introducing
additional external capabilities into the
organization’s in-house development
process. Turning to outside experts may
be particularly useful in the following
situations:
Expert options

Ø Insufficient in-house professional

capabilities in a givenarea.

Ø In small organizations in many cases it is

difficult to find enough suitable candidates
to participate in the design review teams.

Ø In cases of major disagreement among

the organization’s
Software testing

Ø Software tests are formal SQA components

that are targeted toward review of the
actual running of the software. The tests
are based on a prepared list of test cases
that represent a variety of expected
scenarios.

Ø The test report will include a detailed list

of the faults detected and
recommendations.
 Software maintenance components

Ø Software maintenance services vary in

range and are provided for extensive
periods, often several years. These services
fall into the following categories:

Ø Corrective maintenance – User’s support

services and correction of soft-ware code
and documentation failures
 Software maintenance components

Ø Adaptive maintenance –Adaptation of

current software to new circumstances
and customers without changing the
basic software product.

Ø Functionality improvement maintenance–

The functional and performance related
improvement of existing software, carried
out with respect to limited issues.
 Assurance of the quality of the
external perticipant’s work
Ø Subcontractors and customers frequently
join the directly contracted developers
(the “supplier”) in carrying out software
development projects.The larger and
more complex the project, the greater
the likelihood that external participants
will be required, and the larger the
proportion of work trans-mitted to them
The SQA system
Infrastructure components for error
prevention and imporvement
Ø Procedures and work instructions
Ø Templates and checklists
Ø Staff training, retraining, and
certification
Ø Preventive and correctiveactions
Ø Configuration management
Ø Documentation control.
Management SQA components
Management SQA components

Ø Project progress control(including

maintenance contract control)

Ø Software quality metrics

Ø Software quality costs.

SQA standards system certification
and assessment components
SQA standards system certification
and assessment components
Ø Quality management standards
§ SEI CMM assessmentstandard
§ ISO 9001 and ISO 9000-3standards.

Ø Project process standards

§ IEEE 1012 standard
§ ISO/IEC 12207standard.
§ ISO/IEC 29110standard
Organizing for SQA
-The human components
Organizing for SQA
-The human components
Ø Management’s role in SQA
§ The responsibilities of top management

Ø The SQAunit
§ This unit and software testers are the only parts of
the SQA organizational base that devote
themselves full-time to SQAmatters.
Organizing for SQA
-The human components

Ø SQA trustees, committeesand forums

§ SQA trustees are members of development and
maintenance teams who have a special interest in
software quality and are prepared to devote part
of their time to these issues.
Considerations guiding construction of
an organization’s SQA system
Ø Decisions regarding the organization’s
software quality management sys-tem
fall into two main categories:

1. The SQA organizational base

2. The SQAcomponents to be
implemented within the organization
and the extent of their use.
Organizational considerations

Ø The type of software development clientele.

Ø The type of software maintenance clientele.
Ø The range of products.
Ø The size ofthe organization.
Ø The degree and nature of cooperation with
other organizations carrying out related
projects.
Ø Optimization objectives.
Project and maintenance service
considerations
Ø The level of software complexity
and difficulty.

Ø The degree of staff experience with

project technology.

Ø The extent of software reuse in new

projects.
Professional staff considerations

Ø Professional qualifications.

Ø Level of acquaintance with team members.

Reference

Ø Chapter 4:DanielGalin. SOFTWAREQUALITYASSURANCEFrom

theory to implementation. Pearson Education Limited,2004.
Thanks