Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
13.3.1.5
Software Quality Assurance
The responsibility of software quality assurance is to provide management with
appropriate visibility into the process being used by the software project and of the
products being built.
The four goals are as follows:
1. Software quality assurance activities are planned.
2. Adherence of software products and activities to the applicable standards,
procedures, and requirements is verified objectively.
3. Affected groups and individuals are informed of software quality assurance
activities and results.
4. Noncompliance issues that cannot be resolved within the software project are
addressed by senior management.
Apart from these major KPAs, there are many more defined at different levels of CMM.
They include software configuration management, process focus, process definition,
training, integrated software management, product engineering, defect prevention,
technology change management, process change management, quality management,
quantitative process management, peer reviews, and intergroup coordination.
As we saw earlier, major software development processes are requirements gather-
ing, software design, software building, and software testing. In the CMM we can see
that apart from the requirement-gathering process, other processes are not covered.
Actually CMM works as a guideline above these processes and does not specify how
to actually perform these processes in a standard manner. In fact, because of this, any
organization can develop and implement its own standards to perform activities that
come under these process steps and yet claim to be complying with CMM standards,
as they are not violating the top-level standards defined by CMM.
Because of this, for software test management, some organizations have come
up with a standard known as the Test Maturity Model (TMM).
1...
Software Testing and Quality
Many people get confused with the difference between software quality assurance
and software testing. Let us discuss and clarify this issue.
As has been discussed at length in this chapter regarding what is quality and
what are standards, we understand that the quality of a product or a service is the
conformance to some standards maintained by certifying agencies. In the case of
software development, there will be a quality measurement for the software devel-
opment process and a quality measurement for the software product or application
being produced using the software development process. To make a good-qual-
ity software product, the software development process must be of good quality.
