Page 274 - DCAP304_DCAP515_SOFTWARE_PROJECT_MANAGEMENT

Software Project Management

Notes in software quality assurance, says Raghav S. Nandyal in Making Sense of Software Quality
Assurance (www.tatamcgrawhill.com ).
“Beyond winning and losing, poor pit stop performance can result in injuries, lost earnings,
lost sponsorship, and lost jobs. Along similar lines, without an optimising software
development process assisted with an equally capable competency management process,
software initiatives will wrap up without a trace in today’s competitive environment.”
In racing, you are only as fast as the slowest team member and only as successful as the last
pit-stop performance, reads a quote, cited in the book. Likewise, “with software
development, you are only as successful as your team’s ability to handle the steepest
learning curve limited by the slowest learner on the team and leveraging from a strong
software quality assurance competency that enables reuse of competency assets backed by
the efficiencies of a mature development process.”

Nandyal rues that software quality assurance is one of the first tasks to be axed when the
company experiences tight cash flow. He traces the myopic reaction to bizarre and cynical
staffing practices, which fill the assurance teams with non-performers!

The book has instructive chapters on classes of audits and appraisals, information capture,
verification of evidence, and synthesis of final findings. An important chapter speaks
about competencies required of professionals in this sphere of work.
13.6 Summary

 The correct definition of Software Quality Assurance goes something like:
 The function of software quality that assures that the standards, processes, and procedures
are appropriate for the project and are correctly implemented.

 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.
 ISO 9126-1 symbolizes the latest research into characterizing software for the purposes of
software quality control, software quality assurance and software process improvement (SPI).

 Measuring software is a powerful way to track progress towards project goals.
 As Grady states, “Without such measures for managing software, it is difficult for any
organization to understand whether it is successful, and it is difficult to resist frequent
changes of strategy.”
 Appropriately selected metrics can help both management and engineers maintain their
focus on their goals.

 “International Organization of Standardization” Instead of using an acronym (IOS) they
used the Greek word for equal, which is ISO.

13.7 Keywords

ISO: International Organization of Standardization
SVV: Software Verification and Validation
SPI: Software Process Improvement

13.8 Review Questions

1. What testing activities you may want to automate in a project?
2. How to find that tools work well with your existing system?

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