Software Quality Assurance: Meeting Users’ Need

Introduction:

Software surrounds us everywhere in the industrialized

nations - in domestic appliances, communication and

transportation systems and in business. In today’s competitive

business environment, companies are intensely concerned with

the quality of their products and services. A successful

organization must improve quality in every area including its

information system. The issue of quality and quality assurance has

become generally important throughout the industrialized world. It

has become particularly important for software because of the

increasing reliance of business on software and because of the

notorious reputation that software enjoys.

Quality assurance means ensuring that a software system

meets its quality goals. The main objective of quality assurance is

to avoid problems, or to detect them as soon as possible. Poor

quality can result form inaccurate requirements design, faulty

documentation and ineffectively testing. Software which posses’

inferior quality will not meet the users’ need, in connection with

this, the software that has been developed will just be considered

junk software for it doesn’t satisfy the user.1

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In an effort to achieve high standards of quality,

International Organization for Standardization (ISO), a worldwide

body, establishes quality standards for products and services.

Because software is so important to a company success, many

firms seek assurances that the software systems either purchased

or developed in-house, will meet the rigid quality standards. 1991,

ISO established the set of guidelines called ISO 9000-3, which

provide a quality assurance framework for developing and

maintaining.2 Having the standards of quality products and

services gives rise to the SOFTWARE QUALITY ASSURANCE.

Software Quality Assurance (SQA) is defined as a planned

systematic approach to the evaluation of the quality and

adherence to software product standards, processes and

procedures. SQA includes the process of assuring that standards

and procedures are established and are followed throughout the

software acquisitions.3Establishing standards and procedures for

software development is critical, since these provide the

framework from which the software evolves.

Standards are the established criteria to which the software

products are compared. It also implies the range, limit, tolerance,

or norm of some measurable attributes against which compliance

can be judged. For example during white box testing, every

source code statement must be executed at least once. Relating

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this in kitchen work, all peeled potatoes must have no skin

remaining on them.

Procedures are the established criteria to which the

development and control processes are compared. It prescribes a

way of doing something (rule, steps, guidelines, plans). For

example black box testing, white box testing and a walkthrough

must be used to verify each component of software. Relating

again in kitchen, all green vegetables will be steamed, rather than

boiled. Standards and procedures establish the prescribed

methods for developing software.4

In order to come up and established a software quality

assurance, the study posses a thesis statement.

“The function of software quality that assures that the

standards, processes and procedures are appropriate for the

project and are correctly implemented “

Achieving a Good-Quality Software

Software Quality Assurance (SQA) consists of the means of

monitoring the software engineering processes and methods used

to ensure quality.5 To ensure that you have produced good quality

software; the two ways of giving about it must be observe:

• Measuring the attributes of the software that has been

developed.
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• Monitoring and controlling the process of development of

the software.

The attributes of software is measured by:

• Correctness – the extent to use which the software meets its

specification and meets its users’ requirement.

• Reliability – the degree to which the software continues to

work without failing.

• Efficiency – amount of RAM and processor that the software

uses.

• Integrity – the degree to which the software enforces control

over access to information by users.

• Usability – the ease of use of the software

• Maintainability – the effort required to find and fix a fault.

• Flexibility – the effort required to change the software to

meet changed requirements.

• Testability – the effort required to test the software

effectively

• Portability – the effort required to transfer the software to a

different hardware or software platform.

• Re-usability – the extent to which the software (or a

component within it) can be re-used within some other

software.
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• Interoperability – the effort required to make the software

work in conjunction with some other software.

Software monitoring and process of controlling is the SQA

activities that assures software development and control

processes. Software monitoring is an SQA activity that assures

standards are being followed. Ideally, the first products monitored

by SQA should be the project’s standards and procedures. SQA

assures that clear and achievable standards exist and then

evaluates compliance of the software product to the established

standards. Process controlling is an SQA activity that ensures that

appropriate steps to carry out the process being followed.

ISO 9000-3 Guidelines - Quality system 6

Develop a quality system and a manual that describes it.

• Your quality system should ensure that your products

conform to all specified requirements.

• Your quality manual should:

• State your quality policy.

• List your quality objectives.

• Provide an overview of your quality system.

• Describe the structure of your organization.

• Discuss your quality system procedures.

• Introduce your quality documents and records.

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• Teach people about your quality system.

• Control quality system work practices.

• Guide the implementation of your quality system.

• Explain how your quality system will be audited.

Need for Software Quality Assurance (SQA)

There is a need for software quality assurance to:

• Meets its users’ needs

• Avoid problems or to detect them as soon as possible

• Improve the quality of products and services

• Achieve high reliability

Advantages of Software Quality Assurance (SQA) 7

An SQA plan can take a number of paths, testing for

different capabilities and performing different analysis, depending

on the demands of project, the users, and the software itself. But

any rigorous SQA plan carried out scrupulously by seasoned QA

professionals will confer certain benefits:

Improved customer satisfaction

Improved customer satisfaction means longer, more

profitable customer relationships, positive customer testimonials,

and waves of referral business generated from positive word of

mouth. If customers are dissatisfied with a product they have

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purchased from a particular software vendor, they're likely never

to recommend that product nor buy from that software vendor

again. Bugs and defects, in addition to seriously hampering an

application's functionality, look sloppy and unprofessional, and

reflect poorly on a company's reputation.

What's more, without proper testing, it is virtually impossible to

know how new users will respond to an application's functions,

options, and usability features. Unbiased software quality

assurance specialists come to a project fresh, with a clear outlook,

and so serve as the first line of defense against unintuitive user

interfaces and broken application functionality. A quality

application is guaranteed to result in enhanced customer

satisfaction.

Reduced cost of development

Because the process of software quality assurance is

designed to prevent software defects and inefficiencies, projects

that incorporate rigorous, objective testing will find that

development costs are significantly reduced since all later stages

of the development life cycle become streamlined and simplified.

With SQA, all further testing and development including user

testing and customer deployments will go more smoothly, and of

course more quickly -- which means your software development

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project will consistently reach completion on time and within

budget, release after release.

Reduced cost of maintenance

Bug-infested applications are troublesome to support. The

combined cost of unnecessary recalls, returns, and patches can be

frightful. And that says nothing of what will have to be spent on

ongoing customer support, be it by telephone, email, or in person.

All these costs and more can be dramatically reduced by releasing

only rigorously quality-assured products. Software vendors that

invest in quality now can avoid big losses in the future.

Summary

The effort to bring effective software gives rise to Software

Quality Assurance that will help products and services attains

quality assured performance. To improve the processes someone

looks at how and why software achieves good quality and what

can be done to attain software quality assurance.

To effectively observe software quality assurance in

software the following steps:

1. Decide which quality factors are important for the particular

project (e.g. high reliability and maintainability); in

preparing a family meal perhaps flavor and nutritional value

are the paramount goals.

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2. Select standards and procedures from quality manual that

are appropriate to meet the quality goals.

3. Assembles these into a quality assurance plan for the

project; this describes what the procedures and standards

are, when will be done and who does them.

Following the presented steps will remedy the faults incurred in

system development and quality software will be assured to

performed according to the users’ needs.

Endnotes

1
Shelley, Cashman & Rosenblatt, System Analysis and Design,

4th edition, p.10.2

2
http://www.praxiom.com/iso-9000-3.htm
3
http://satc.gsfc.nasa.gov/assure/agbsec3.txt
4
Bell, Douglas, Software Engineering, 3rd edition, p. 425
5
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_quality_assurance
6
http://www.praxiom.com/iso-9000-3.htm
7
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_quality_assurance
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