Quality Standards

D.Sivaraam

1. Introduction
Now a days the world became smaller and smaller. Day to day new products are
introduced to the market and is used by the people throughout the world. To
capture the market,the producer want to establish his capability of products
accepted by most of the customers, also want to have easiness at the time of
production and maintenance. It can be achieved only if the producer produce
goods and doing service adhering to some standard. The consumer want to ensure
that the product bought by him is reliable; it is worth for the cost he/she is paying.
So naturally the customer prefer the products manufactured by the companies
who follow some standards or some defined process. Thus for a producer and
customer the standard becomes more useful for producing and getting quality
output t. Few of the standards are discussed in this article.

2. Benefits of Standards
For a production industry if the components are standardized, mass production
can be done, resulting in reduction of cost. In software industry if coding standard
is followed, any one in the organization can replaced any where within the
organization and do coding without any difficulty. Standard components can be
created and used in more than one project, which will reduce the effort required to
complete the program. At the time of maintenance it will be much easier to carry
out the maintenance activities. The purchaser can know the standard of the
product on knowing the standards used in the manufacturing organization.

3. Types of Standards
The standards may be generally classified as below.
a. Project Level Standards
Eg. Naming Convention
GUI Standards
Coding Standards
Error Message Standards

b. Organizational Level Standards

Eg. Naming Convention
Coding Standards
Error Message Standards

c. Global Level standards

Eg. ISO 9001 2000
CMM
4. Naming conventions
The purpose of the naming convention is to make the designer, coder , tester,
reviewer to understand easily what is referred or used where. Throughout the
project a standard will be followed to mention database components,
variables..etc. It will be easy at the time of maintenance also.
Example
TbMastUser Table Name First two letters say it is a
TbTranPurchaseHdr table
Next four letters say it is
master table of
transaction table.
intUser_UserID Field Name First three letters define
vchUser_UserName the data type, the next
word refers the table
name, the letters after the
_ refers the field name
g_str Variable The first letter mentions
f_str the variable is global
level or form level.

5. GUI Standards
GUI standards are defined to make the product more users friendly. The training
effort becomes less. Any user can learn and start working in the shortest time. The
size of the forms, the color formats used in the forms, location of the command
buttons, display of menus…etc are some of the areas where we can define
standards. Normally this will be defined for each project.

6. Coding Standards:
This is again for easy production and maintenance. For each language we can
define separate coding standards and it may be used for the project. It is better to
have Organizational wide standards for easy interchangeability of team members,
handling change requests, bugs fixing and maintenance.

7. Error Message Standards

The error message standard can be framed to make the user friendly interface. If
some thing goes wrong because of the system or operation, the message will be
displayed. Normally they will be taken from a repository. It will make the display
of same error message at the time of occurrence of same errors and the user also
find easy to know about the error. The icons used in the error message will be
more helpful for the user.

8. ISO 9001: 2000

This is globally accepted standard. In 1970s standard come into existence, but
each country has their own standard. Because of globalization of market it
becomes common that product manufactured one country is used by another
country. So most of them start realizing the need of common standards. So at the
end of 1979 a team is formed to define the standards, which is acceptable by all
the countries. As a result in 1987 March the first version of ISO 9000 standard is
published. There are 176 countries following the standards in which India is one
of them.
Standards are defined and all are following it. Day to day the requirements are
changing. The industries are also changing their activities to meet the market
requirement. So it became mandatory to revise the standards also. It is decided to
revise the ISO standards once in 5 years. Based on that in 1994 the second version
of ISO is released. Again in 2000 the next version is released, which is followed
through out the world. At the end of 2005 we are expecting new version of ISO
with minor changes.

ISO9001 2000 is framed based on eight quality management principles. They are
1. Customer Focus
2. Leadership
3. Involvement of People
4. Process Approach
5. System Approach
6. Continual Improvement
7. Factual approach to decision making.
8. Mutually beneficial supplier relationships.
Also ISO 9001 2000 has eight main clauses.
1. Scope
Divided into two sub clauses and describes the scope.
2. Normative Reference
This section contains the dated references, subsequent amendments to,
or revisions of, any of these publications do not apply…etc
3. Terms and Definitions
This sections gives the terms used in the standard and definitions of
the words used.
The rest of the five clauses describe the major area of ISO 9001 2000
requirements.

4. Quality Management System

This section says about the need of defining the processes, sequence
and interaction of processes, availability of resources and information.
This section also mentions about the requirements of documented
procedures, the mandatory records to be maintained and the control of
documents..
In addition to that it says about the Quality Manual which defines the
quality system of the organization.

5. Management Commitment
This is one of the main section of the ISO 9001 2000 standards. This
defines the importance of Top Management’s role in implementing the
 Quality Management System. It is the Top Management’s
responsibility to communicate the organization about the importance
of meeting customer as well as statuary and regulatory requirements.
Establishing Quality Policy, Quality Objectives, Conducting
management reviews are also part of Top Management’s responsibility.
Also it mentioned about the interest of the management on customer
focus. Every thing is defined. To execute it, follow it some resources
with responsibility and authority should be made available. Top
management appoints a person to follow all the activities of
implementation of Quality Management System and update the
management about the happenings in the institution.
For effective implementation the communication is an important one.
Management will also do it .All these are followed by management
review meeting called by the Top management at defined intervals.

6. Resource Management
This sections defines the requirements are providing right resources at
right places. The resource allocated to a particular task should have
competence to do the task and has awareness about the function. If
necessary training is to be given to upgrade the resource.
This clause also tells about the Infrastructure and the work
environment, in order to give a quality output.

7. Product Realization
This is another important clause, which tells about the product. Here
Planning is done to get the quality product, As the product is directly
related to customer, this clause says about the customer related
processes. The method of recording customer requirement, handling
the changes in the requirements, review of the requirements and the
communications made with the customer are addressed in this clause.
Next comes the design of the product. In some case the customer gives
design, some times design is done by the producer. It also talks about
development inputs, output, verification and validation.
Purchase is also considered here. This defines the method of purchase
of the materials. Traceability, preservation of product, handling
customer property and controlling of measuring and monitoring
devises are addressed in this clause.

8. Measurement, analysis and improvement.

In this section Customer Satisfaction is taken to measure the products
ability. Internal Quality Audits are taken to know the effectiveness of
process implementation. It also defines about the control of Non
confirming product and analysis of data.

Generally this is not specific to Software alone. It is a standard to be followed for

any industry making products or doing service.
 9. Capability Maturity Model
This is initially defined to meet the requirement of the suppliers of US defense
ministry. In Nov 1986 the US Department of defense initiated this activity. The
first version of CMMv1.0 is released on 15th Aug 1991.
CMM is a common-sense application of software or business management and
quality improvement concepts to software development and maintenance. It can
also be called as a commonly developed guide for evolving towards a culture of
engineering excellence, model for organization improvement.

Structure of CMM

CMM Comprises of five maturity levels.

Each Maturity Level is composed into several Key Practice Areas.
Each Key Practice area is organized into five sections called common features.
Common Features are
1. Commitment to perform
2. Ability to Perform
3. Activities Performed
4. Measurement Analysis
5. Verification and Implementation

Levels of CMM

Level 1 – Initial
In this level company the software process is characterized as ad hoc, and occasionally
even chaotic. Few processes are defined, and success depends on individual effort and
heroics. Few processes are defined, and success
Level 2 - Repeatable
In this level, the basic project management processes are established to track Cost,
Schedule and Functionality. The necessary process discipline is in place to repeat earlier
successes on projects with similar applications
The Key Practice Areas are
Requirement Management, Software Project Planning, Software Project
Tracking and Oversight., Software Subcontract Management, Software
Quality Assurance, Software Configuration Management.

Level 3 – Defined
In this level the Organizational Level Process are defined both for Management and
Engineering activities, Process Documents, Standards are created. All projects use only
approved documents.
The Key Practice Areas Covered in this level are
Organizational Process Focus, Organizational Process Definition,
Training Program, Integrated Software Management Software Product
Engineering, Inter Group Coordination, Peer Reviews.

Level 4 - Managed
In this level the effectiveness of the process are measured. Quality of the product are
measured, both the software process and products are quantitatively understood and
controlled.
The Key Practice areas covered in this section are
Software Quality Management, Quantitative Process Management

Level 5 – Optimized
This level consists of two Key practice areas
Process Change Management and Technology Change Management.

Reference:

http://www.sei.cmu.edu/cmm/
http://www2.umassd.edu/SWPI/processframework/cmm/cmm.html