Page 195 - SOFTWARE TESTING & QUALITY ASSURANCE

Software Testing and Quality Assurance

Figure 13.3 depicts the quality assurance or test group that reports to executive
management

Figure 13.3: Test Group Reporting to Executive
Management

Figure 13.3 depicts the quality assurance team or test group reporting to the executive management. In
this kind of organizational structure, the teams accountable for software quality directly report to the
senior management, based on their individual projects. The level of authority is equally segregated
between the quality assurance level and the testing level. The teams are allowed to set standards and
guidelines, measure the results, and adopt various processes to improve the software quality. Any
information or report concerning quality of the product is directly sent to the top management.
The group is independent of the project, but this does not mean that they can set unreasonable and
difficult quality goals, unless and until it is the requirement of the project. A corporate quality standard
that works well on database software may not be suitable when applied to a computer game.

To be effective, an independent quality organization has to find different ways to work with all the
projects they deal with, and set the standard for quality with the practicality of releasing the software.
These three organizational structures are just a few examples. The positives and negatives discussed for
each structure may differ widely. In software development and testing, one size doesn't necessarily fit
all; neither does the standard that works for one team will be suitable for another one.
13.2 Software Quality Assurance Metrics

The basic difference between a metrics and an indicator is that metric is a certain rule that is used to
measure some features or trait of a computer software entity, where as an indicator is defined as a
variable that can be set to a prescribed state based on the results of a process. The main aim of the
software quality metrics is to evaluate whether the software quality requirements are being met
throughout the development cycle of the software product. The metrics that we obtain from the
software serves as a base for software testing and design decisions. Once a software product is
delivered to the end user, we measure the number of defects found during the maintainability of the
system using software quality metrics. Software quality assurance metrics are closely connected with
software development metrics.

File size metric. It is used to determine the total number of characters in the
main files of a program.

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