Page 266 - DCAP304_DCAP515_SOFTWARE_PROJECT_MANAGEMENT

Software Project Management

Notes are developing an order processing system. The functional requirements can also be very
technically oriented. Functional requirements that you may consider to be also
architecturally significant system-wide functional requirements may include auditing,
licensing, localization, mail, online help, printing, reporting, security, system management,
or workflow. Each of these may represent functionality of the system being developed
and they are each a system-wide functional requirement.
2. Usability: Usability includes looking at, capturing, and stating requirements based around
user interface issues, things such as accessibility, interface aesthetics, and consistency
within the user interface.

3. Reliability: Reliability includes aspects such as availability, accuracy, and recoverability,
for example, computations, or recoverability of the system from shut-down failure.
4. Performance: Performance involves things such as throughput of information through the
system, system response time (which also relates to usability), recovery time, and startup
time.

5. Supportability: Finally, we tend to include a section called Supportability, where we
specify a number of other requirements such as testability, adaptability, maintainability,
compatibility, configurability, installability, scalability, localizability, and so on.
Why don’t we apply these proven Quality Management Processes to Software?
The definition still refers back to the traditional manufacturing QA world. There are, however,
some notable differences between software and a manufactured product.
These differences all stem from the fact that the manufactured product is physical and can be
seen whereas the software product is not visible. Therefore its function, benefit and costs are not
as easily measured.
The following differences highlight some of the issues in taking the manufacturing QA model
and applying it to software development.
 The manufactured product is a physical realization of the customer requirements.
 The function of the product can be verified against this physical realization.
 The costs of manufacture, including rework, repairs, recalls etc., are readily categorized
and visible.
The benefit of the product to its user customer is readily categorized and visible.
In order to overcome these types of issues, and reap the benefit of QA applied to software, other
terms, models and paradigms needed to be (and were) developed.
In order to identify the Software Costs and Benefits, remembering Fujitsu’s term with cost and
performance as prime consideration, a number of Software Characteristics where defined.

Notes These characteristics are sometimes referred to as Quality Attributes, Software
Metrics or Functional and Non-Functional Requirements.

13.2 ISO-9126

ISO 9126 is a worldwide standard for the evaluation of software. The standard is split into four
parts: quality model; external metrics; internal metrics; and quality in use metrics.

260 LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY