Software Quality: Concepts and Practice

Book Preface

The following software “glitches” seem very real:

• Thousands of the US students in numerous cities around the United States had just taken their examination. Tired and excited, they pressed the submit button only to find that their answers could not be uploaded with the software (purchased specifically for this purpose). As expected, the anger, utter frustration, and disappointment of the students turned into a flood of lawsuits against the exam software company.

• More than 24 inmates from a US jail were wrongly released, among them were prisoners jailed for violent crimes. The faulty release was caused by the erroneous release of documents that were produced by a new software system recently implemented to manage the institute’s records. According to the spokesman of the county jail, the mistake was due to glitches in the software, which caused the misprocessing of a number of input documents. The early detection of the software failure prevented a much higher number of faulty inmate releases.

• A software failure in an income tax collection system caused millions of citizens to use the wrong tax code in the income tax site program. This mistake caused many people to pay less than required, and many to pay more than required. Unfortunately, it took a whole year to identify the failure. Naturally, the inevitable happened, and the income tax department now faces innumerable filings for tax returns. Only when these return procedures have concluded, will the income tax department be able to estimate the total damage caused by the software failure. The above are just a sample of glitches that happen every day. These software failures have the potential to cause substantial damages. Every single one of them could have been eliminated, or practically eliminated, if only the software project teams would have performed appropriate software quality assurance processes, and SQA professionals would have carried out properly the required process coordination, follow-up, and evaluation tasks. These software quality assurance processes, and many more, are the contents of my book

Software Quality: Concepts and Practice.

The book structure

The book is structured in six parts that follow the IEEE Std. 730:2014 outline:

Part I: Introduction – Presents definitions and topics associated with software quality.

Part II: SQA Process Implementation Activities –Dedicated to software quality assurance activities of the SQA function, and includes establishing the SQA processes in the organization, planning the SQA activities, and the application of software quality costs.

Part III: Product Assurance Activities for Conformance – Deals with evaluation and product quality measurement.

Part IV: Process Assurance Activities for Conformance – Discusses process quality evaluation and measurement, process improvements, and also the assessment of staff skills and knowledge and the required training.

Part V: Additional Tools and Methods Supporting Software Quality – Presents configuration management, CASE tools, and the topic of templates and checklists – all of significant contribution to achieve software quality requirements. Part VI: Appendices

– Presents basic software quality and software engineering topics associated with SQA: software engineering and SQA standards and models and project progress control. This part also includes a review of software development methodologies and processes, and their quality assurance activities.

Unique features of this book

The following key features of this book are of special importance: a. A broad view of SQA. The book delves extensively into the SQA subject matter and covers issues much beyond the classic boundaries of custommade software development by large established software houses. It dedicates significant attention to issues related to in-house software development, subcontractors, suppliers of readymade software, and other external participants in the software development process, and also covers small software projects. b. An up-to-date wide range coverage of SQA and SQA-related topics. The book provides comprehensive coverage on a wide range of SQA and SQA-related subjects, and includes topics that are rarely discussed in SQA texts. These include procedures and work instructions, tools and supporting techniques such as templates and checklists, documentation control, staff certification, and cost of software quality.

c. A comprehensive discussion of new technology and methodology topics. The text covers extensively the current SQA topics, and discusses the impact of new software development methodologies, computerized SQA tools, and international SQA standards. d. A thorough presentation of the SQA function. and its tasks Establishes the SQA processes, planning, coordinating, follow-up, reviewing and evaluation of SQA processes performed by software process teams and others. e. Special emphasis on the SQA plan and project plan topics. The processes of preparing and updating the plans and their implementation are discussed in detail. f. Special attention is given to SQA implementation issues. g. Throughout the book a focus is placed on implementation issues in specialized chapter sections, examples, implementation tips and topics for discussion. Consistent structure in each chapter: A mini case study at the beginning followed by subject matter that includes examples, summary, selected bibliography, review questions, and topics for discussion – the book is tailor-made for semester classes in software engineering programs, and should prove to be very useful as a textbook for many different courses. h. An Instructor’s Guide