Software quality assurance

the long version

Designed to appeal to students and practitioners in software engineering, this book is a tutorial guide to the design of systems that produce high quality software. Different development methods produce software with different features and characteristics. Process models define the software production process; they document the interaction between the technical managerial tasks and activities that implement the development methods. It is necessary to plan, schedule, resource and control the development of software, since many quality problems originate from failures in these areas. The authors suggest some factors that might result in poor planning. Identifying those aspects of the project planning and control process that affect quality suggests how the potential problems may be avoided. In order to be more effective and meet the requirements of ISO9000-3, quality engineers should use metrics to improve the quality of both the software and the process used to produce it. A chapter is therefore devoted to this topic. The book explains the differences between reviews, inspections and walkthroughs and clearly identifies when each is appropriate. Also outlined are cost-effective ways of planning, controlling and documenting the testing process. Each chapter concludes with a range of exercises to enable readers to test their understanding of the material presented.