Software Quality Assurance Framework & Methodologies

In this article you shall understand:

What is Software Quality?

What is Software Quality Assurance?

Components Of Quality Assurance

Software Quality Assurance Plan

Quality Standards

Now lets see all these topics in more detail.

1. What is Software Quality?

According to computer literature Quality means “Meeting Requirement”. If we talk about product based definition of quality, it reflects that the product has something extra that other similar products do not have and that also adds value to the product.

2. What is Software QA / Quality Assurance?

Software quality assurance is combination of systematic activities providing evidence of the fitness for use of the total software product.

The target of best quality is achieved through the use of established guidelines for quality control to ensure integrity and prolonged life of software.

Software QA is a planned effort to ensure that a software product fulfills criteria and has additional attributes specific to the product.

It is the collection of activities and functions used to monitor and control a software project so that specific objectives are achieved with the desired level of confidence.

A good quality assurance is not the sole responsibility of the software quality assurance group but is determined by the consensus of the project manager ,project leader, project personnel, any third party and the users.

3. Components of Software Quality Assurance

Software Testing: Software testing is a popular risk management strategy. It is useful to verify that functional requirements of a software are met through verification and validation.

The major purpose of verification and validation activities is to ensure that software design, code, and documentation meet all the requirements imposed on them.

Software Quality Control: Quality control is defined as the processes and methods used to monitor work and observe whether requirements are met. It focuses on reviews and removal of defects before shipment of products.

For small projects, the project personnel’s peer group or the department’s software quality coordinator can inspect the documents. On the other hand for large projects a configuration control board may be responsible for the software quality control.

Software Configuration Management: It is concerned with the labeling, tracking and controlling changes in the software elements of a system.

This stage consists of activities that ensure that design and code are defined and cannot be changed without a review of the effect of the change itself and its documentation.

Elements of software configuration management.

Component Identification: A basic software configuration management activity is to identify the Software components that make up deliverable at each point of development.

In order to mange the development process one must establish methods and name the component standards.

Version Control

Software is frequently changed as it evolves through a succession of temporary states called versions. A facility for controlling versions is a software configuration management repository or library.

Configuration Building

To build a software configuration one needs to identify the correct components versions and execute the component build procedures. This is often called Configuration building.

Software configuration management uses different approaches for selecting versions.The simplest method is to maintain all the component versions.

Change control

Software Change control is the process by which a modification to a software component is proposed.

Modification of a configuration has four elements : a change request, an impact analysis of the change,a set of modifications and additions of new components and a method for reliably installing new components.

4. Software Quality Assurance Plan

Software quality assurance plan is an outline of quality measures to ensure quality levels within a software development effort.

The software qa plan provides the framework and guidelines for development of understandable and maintainable code.

Step to develop and implement a Software quality Assurance Plan

Step 1. Document the plan.

Step 2. Obtain Management Acceptance.

Step 3. Obtain development acceptance.

Step 4. Plan for implementation of the SQA Plan.

Step 5. Execute the SQA Plan.

5. Quality Standards.

• ISO9000
• CMM( Capability Maturity Model)

• PCMM(People Capability Maturity Model)

• CMMI