1. Software Quality assurance SQA – SWE 333
The Components of the SQA
Overview
Prof. Mohamed Batouche

2. SQA System An SQA Architecture Project Life Cycle SQA components
Development plan
and Quality Plan
Ch.6
Pre-project SQA components
Project Life Cycle SQA components
Formal Design Reviews
Sec. 8.2
Experts Opinion
Sec. 8.5
Peer Reviews
Sec. 8.3
SQA of External Participants
Ch 12
Software Maintenance
Ch. 11
Software Testing
Chs. 9-10
Quality Infrastructure components
Procedures
Ch. 14
Supporting
Devices
Ch. 15
Training
Instruction
Ch. 16
Preventive
Actions
Ch.17
Configuration
Management
Ch. 18
Document-
ation
Control
Ch. 19
Quality Management
Progress
Ch. 20
Software
Quality
Metrics
Ch. 21
Costs
Ch. 22
Standards
Ch. 23
Process
Ch.24
Organizational Base – Human components
Management - Ch. 25
SQA Unit - Sec. 26.1
SQA Committees – Sec. 26.2
SQA Trustees – Sec. 26.2
SQA Forums – Sec 26.4
Contract review
Ch.5
An SQA Architecture

3. SQA System SQA Components
SQA System Components can be classified into six classes:
Pre-project components
Software project life cycle components
Infrastructure components for error prevention and improvements
Management SQA components
SQA standards, system certification and assessment components
Organizing for SQA – the human components

4. SQA System
Pre-project components

5. SQA System SQA Components
Pre-project components
Contract reviews: includes a detailed examination of the project proposal draft and the contract drafts.
Development and quality plans: Once the contract is signed, a plan is prepared of the project and its integrated quality activities.

6. SQA System SQA Components Project development plan
The main issues treated in the project development plan are:
Schedules
Required manpower and hardware resources
Risk evaluations
Organizational issues: team members, subcontractors and partnerships
Project methodology, development tools, etc.
Software reuse plans

7. SQA System SQA Components Project’s quality plan
The main issues treated in the project’s quality plan are:
Quality goals, expressed in the appropriate measurable terms
Criteria for starting and ending each project stage
List of reviews, tests, and other scheduled verification and validation activities.

8. SQA System
Software project life cycle components

9. SQA System SQA Components
Software project life cycle components:
Reviews
Expert opinions
Software testing
Software maintenance components
Assurance of the quality of external participants’ work

10. SQA System SQA Components
Software project life cycle components: C
Reviews: The design phase of the development process produces a variety of documents. Reviews can be categorized as follows:
Formal design reviews (DRs): These documents require formal professional approval of their quality before moving to next step. Committees are composed of senior professionals including project leader.
Peer reviews (Inspections and Walkthrough): Directed at reviewing short documents. Reviewers are all peers. The main objective is to detect as many design and programming faults as possible.

11. SQA System SQA Components
Software project life cycle components:
Expert opinions: Introduce additional external capabilities into the organization:
Outside experts may join a DR committee.
Their opinions may replace a DR.
In case of disagreement of senior professionals, an outside expert may support a decision.

12. SQA System SQA Components
Software project life cycle components:
Software testing: This includes formal SQA components that are targeted toward review of the actual running of the software. All tests have to be designed, planned and approved.
Software maintenance components: Software maintenance services fall into three categories:
Corrective maintenance
Adaptive maintenance
Functionality improvement maintenance
Assurance of the quality of external participants’ work: Special efforts are needed to assure the quality of the hardware, software, staff and training supplied by the customer.

13. SQA System
Infrastructure components for error prevention and improvements

14. SQA System SQA Components
Infrastructure components for error prevention and improvements
Procedures and work instruction
Templates and checklists
Staff training, retraining and certification
Preventive and corrective actions
Configuration management
Documentation control

15. SQA System SQA Components
Infrastructure components for error prevention and improvements
Documentation control functions: Refer mainly to customer requirement documents, contract documents, design reports, project plans, …
Documentation control activities: Entail definition of the needed documents, specification of the format, definition of review and approval processes, definition of the archive storage methods

16. SQA System
Management SQA components

17. SQA System SQA Components
Management SQA components
Project progress control
Software quality metrics
Software quality costs

18. SQA System SQA Components
Management SQA components
Project progress control: The main objective is to detect any situation that may induce a deviation from the project’s plan. It focuses on :
Resource usage
Schedules
Risk management activities
The budget

19. SQA System SQA Components
Management SQA components
Software quality metrics: Measurement is an effective tool for the support of the control activities. Examples of metrics are:
Development teams’ productivity
Software faults density
Schedule deviations

20. SQA System SQA Components
Management SQA components
Software quality costs: the quality costs are the cost of control combined with the costs of failure. Management is especially interested in the total sum of the quality costs.

21. SQA System
SQA standards, system certification and assessment components

22. SQA System SQA Components
SQA standards, system certification and assessment components
Project process standards (Guidelines for how to do …)
(IEEE 1012 standard, ISO/IEC standard)
Quality management standards (Guidelines for What to do …)
(SEI CMM assessment standard, ISO 9001 and ISO standards)
Objectives:
Utilization of international professional knowledge
Improvement of coordination with other organizations’ quality systems
Objective professional evaluation and measurement of the organization’s SQA achievement

23. Organizations involed in SQA standards development
Most prominent developers of SQA standards:
IEEE (Institute of Electric and Electronic Engineers) Computer Society
ISO (International Standards Organization)
DOD (US Department of Defense)
ANSI (American National Standards Institute)
IEC (International Electrotechnical Commission)
EIA (Electronic Industries Association)

24. SQA standards, system certification and assessment components
Quality management standards

25. SQA System SQA Components
SQA standards, system certification and assessment components
Quality management standards:
This type of standards guide the management of software development, maintenance and infrastructure.
These standards focus on what is required and leave the decision about how to achieve it to the organization.
The most familiar examples of this type are:
SEI CMM assessment standard,
ISO 9001 and ISO standards.

26. ISO 9000-3 Principles Customer focus Leadership Involvement of people
Process approach
System approach to management
Continual improvement
Factual approach to decision making
Mutually supportive supplier relationships

27. SQA standards, system certification and assessment components
Project process standards

28. SQA System SQA Components
SQA standards, system certification and assessment components
Project process standards:
They are professional standards that provide methodological guidelines (dealing with the question of “how”) for the development team. Well known examples of this type of standards are:
IEEE 829 standard, - Software test documentation
IEEE 1028 standard, - Software reviews
IEEE/EIA standard – Software life cycle processes

29. IEEE /EIA12207 standard
Source: IEEE (1992). From IEEE Std Copyright 1992 IEEE. All rights reserved.

30. IEEE Std.829 Software Test Documention
Documents that can be produced as part of the testing effort are as follows:
Test Planning
Test Plan
Test Specification
Test design specification
Test case specification
Test procedure specification
Test Reporting
Test Item transmittal report
Test log
Test incident summary
Test summary

31. Review requirements of IEEE Std.1028
Document structure:
(1) Introduction
(2) Responsibilities The responsibilities of the participants in the review.
(3) Input Mandatory and optional data items.
(4) Entry criteria Common criteria: a. a statement of the review's objectives. b. Availability of the required input data.
(5) Procedure Required to include: management preparations, planning, team preparation, examination of the products, follow up of corrections.
(6) Exit criteria What must be accomplished before the review can be concluded.
(7) Output items
(8) Data collection recommendations To be used to study the effectiveness and efficiency of current practices.
(9) Improvements Formulate improved procedures, checklists and development processes.

32. SQA standards, system certification and assessment components
Types of Standards
Documentation Standards: Specify form and content for planning, control and product documentation.
Design Standards: Specify the form and content of the design product.
Code Standards: Specify the language to be used and any restrictions on use of language features.

33. SQA System
Organizing for SQA – the human components

34. SQA System SQA Components
Organizing for SQA – the human components
Management’s role in SQA
The SQA unit
SQA trusties
SQA committees
SQA forums

35. SQA System SQA Components
Organizing for SQA – the human components
Management’s role in SQA: The responsibilities of top management, departmental management and project management include the following:
Definition of the quality policy
Effective follow-up of quality policy implementation
Allocation of sufficient resources and adequate staff
Solutions of schedule, budget and costumer relations difficulties

36. SQA System SQA Components
Organizing for SQA – the human components
The SQA unit: The SQA unit’s task is to serve as the main moving force, initiator, and coordinator of the SQA system. This unit and software testers are the only parts that devote themselves full-time to SQA matters. The SQA unit’s task include:
Preparation of annual quality programs
Consultation with experts on software quality issues
Conduct of internal quality audits
Leadership of quality assurance various committees
Support of quality infrastructure components

37. SQA System SQA Components
Organizing for SQA – the human components
SQA trusties, committees and forums:
SQA trustees are members of development and maintenance teams who are prepared to devote part of their time to SQA issues.
SQA committee members are members of various software development and maintenance units who are appointed for term or ad hoc service.
SQA forums are composed of professionals and practitioners who meet and/or maintain an internet site for discussion of quality issues.

38. SQA System
An Architecture

39. The Software Quality Shrine
Project
Development plan
and Quality Plan
Ch.6
Pre-project SQA components
Project Life Cycle SQA components
Formal Design Reviews
Sec. 8.2
Experts Opinion
Sec. 8.5
Peer Reviews
Sec. 8.3
SQA of External Participants
Ch 12
Software Maintenance
Ch. 11
Software Testing
Chs. 9-10
Quality Infrastructure components
Procedures
Ch. 14
Supporting
Devices
Ch. 15
Training
Instruction
Ch. 16
Preventive
Actions
Ch.17
Configuration
Management
Ch. 18
Document-
ation
Control
Ch. 19
Quality Management
Progress
Ch. 20
Software
Quality
Metrics
Ch. 21
Costs
Ch. 22
Standards
Ch. 23
Process
Ch.24
Organizational Base – Human components
Management - Ch. 25
SQA Unit - Sec. 26.1
SQA Committees – Sec. 26.2
SQA Trustees – Sec. 26.2
SQA Forums – Sec 26.4
Contract review
Ch.5

40. References
Williaw E. Lewis, “Software Testing And Continuous Quality Improvement”, Third Edition, CRC Press, 2009.
K. Naik and P. Tripathy: “Software Testing and Quality Assurance”, Wiley, 2008.
Ian Sommerville, Software Engineering, 8th edition, 2006.
Aditya P. Mathur,“Foundations of Software Testing”, Pearson Education, 2009.
D. Galin, “Software Quality Assurance: From Theory to Implementation”, Pearson Education, 2004
David Gustafson, “Theory and Problems of Software Engineering”, Schaum’s Outline Series, McGRAW-HILL, 2002.

41. Q & A