1. Software Quality
Management Standards
(SQMS)
MCN 8108 Software Quality Assurance& Testing
Class Presentations. Nov 05 . 2011
ALOYSIUSOCHOLA
2010/HD18/431U, oaloxde@yahoo.co.uk
MAKERERE UNIVERSITY
Faculty of Computing and InformaticsTechnology

2. Software Quality
 Quality
• Generally an excellence of standard or level
 Software Quality
• When its bug free, delivered on time and within budget,
meets requirements, expectations and is maintainable.
 Some Problems Affecting SQ
• Tension between quality attributes
• Customer vs Developer points of view
• Requirements and associated problems
• ambiguity
• Incompleteness
• Changes during development, etc

3. Software Quality Management
 Aimed to manage the quality of software and of its
development process
 Encapsulate 3 major procedural activities
• Software Quality Assurance(SQA)
• Establish organisational procedures and standards for quality
• Software Quality Plan (SQP)
• Select applicable procedures and standards for a particular project
and modify these as required
• Software Quality Control (SQC)
• Ensure that procedures and standards are followed by the software
development team

4. Software Quality Assurance
 Monitors and tries to improve the development process from the
beginning of the project to ensure Quality.
 Also ensures that the Software project is based on previously agreed
specifications, standards and functionality and does not defects and
possible problems.
 Encompasses the entire software development process
• Requirements definition
• Software Architecture (design and coding process)
• Implementation and Testing
• Documentation
• Training and Support
• Maintenance
 Incorporated knowledge base of best practices
 Off­the­shelf software tools selected to be used during the process

5. Software Quality Plan
 A project level quality plan written for declaring project commitment
to follow an applicable set of standards, regulations tools during the
development life­cycle
 Contain quality goals to be achieved, expected risks and risk
management
 SQP sources are derived from
• SQA components that are adopted or customized to the
project's needs
• New procedures, standards and tools complementing
missing or not-applicable SQA components
 Any deviation of an SQP from SQA should be justified by the project
manager and be confirmed by the company management

6. Software Quality Control
 Ensures in­process that both SQA and SQP are being
followed by the development teams
 SQC activities include
• Mentoring how to produce artifacts, Ex well-defined
engineering documents using standard templates
• Mentoring how to conduct standard processes, such as
quality reviews
• Perform in-process quality reviews to verify, evaluate
and confirm artifacts
• Verify and evaluate to improve the use of methods,
procedures and adopted software tools

7.  A standard can be defined as a degree or level
of required excellence or attainment.
 In SE context: it can be defined by the clients
and developers or both, in terms of mutual
agreement on the protocols to be followed, Ex.
• Clients with his requirements
• Developer and the development tools
 Institutions have also defined several standards
to guide software quality.
The SQM Standards ­ What is?

8. Some Standards Organisations
 ANSI: American National Standards Institute. Does not itself make
standards but approves them.
 AIAA: American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (Ex. AIAA R­
013­1992 Recommended Practice for Software Reliability)
 EIA: Electronic Industries Association (Ex. EIA/IS­632 Systems
Engineering)
 IEC: International Electro­technical Commission (Ex. IEC 61508
Functional Safety ­ Safety­Related Systems)
 IEEE: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Computer
Society Software Engineering Standards Committee (Ex. IEEE Std
1228­1994 Standard for Software Safety Plans)
 ISO: International Organization for Standardization (Ex. ISO/IEC
2382­7:1989 Vocabulary­Part 7: Computer Programming)

9.  Prevents idiosyncrasy Ex. Standards for primitives in
programming languages
 Customer protection Ex. Quality assurance standards
 Encapsulation of best practice­ avoids repetition of past
mistakes, Ex. Repeating inspection processes, which in turn
is very complex.
 They are a framework for quality assurance processes ­ they
involve checking compliance to standards.
 They provide continuity ­ new staff can understand the
organisation by understanding the standards that are used.
Why Standards

10. Quality Assurance Standard
 Differing views of quality standards:
• Taking a systems view
• that good management systems yield high quality
• And taking an analytical view
• that good measurement frameworks yield high quality
 Ex. Quality management: ISO 9000­3 Quality
Management and Quality Assurance Standards
• Part 3: Guidelines for the application of 9001 to the
development, supply, installation and maintenance
of computer software
 Ex. Quality measurement: IEEE Std 1061­1992
Standard for Software Quality Metrics Methodology

11. Project Management Standards
 Concerned with how general principles of
good management are applied to specific
areas of software engineering
 Examples of Standards under this.
• General project management: IEE Std
1058.1-1987 Standard for Software
Project Management Plans
• Producing plans: IEEE Std 1059-1993
Guide for Software Verification and
Validation Plans

12. System Engineering Standard
 Particular application domains develop
sophisticated interactions between system and
software engineering, so standardizing from a
systems point of view can be beneficial.
 Standards Examples:
• Lifecycle: ISO/IEC WD 15288 System Life
Cycle Processes
• Requirements: IEEE Std 1233-1996 Guide
for Developing System Requirements
Specifications

13. Safety Standards
 These traditionally come out of specific
industrial sectors since safety requires deep
analysis of the domain and the technology
 Examples of such standards include
• Safety plans: IEEE Std 1228-1994
Standard for Software Safety Plans
• Functional safety: IEC 61508 Functional
Safety-Safety-Related Systems
• Nuclear domain: IEE 603 Criteria for
Safety Systems of Nuclear Plants

14. Product Standards
 Focus on the products of software
engineering, rather than on the processes
used to obtain them.
 product standards seem difficult to obtain.
 Ex.
• Product evaluation: ISO/IEC 14598
Software product evaluation
• Packaging: ISO/IEC 12119:1994
Software Packages - Quality Requirements
and Testing

15. Problems with Standards
 They may not be seen as relevant and up­to­
date by software engineers.
 They often involve too much bureaucratic
form filling.
 If they are unsupported by software tools,
tedious manual work is often involved to
maintain the documentation associated with
the standards.

16. References
 Chemuturi, Murali (2010). Software Quality Assurance: Best
Practices, Tools and Techniques for Software Developers
 Ian Sommerville (2004), Software Engineering, 7th edition
 Select Business Solutions, retrieved Oct 2011 from
http://www.selectbs.com/analysis­and­design/what­is­a­software­development­process
 NASA­STD­8739.8 w/Change 1, (July 28, 2004) Software
Assurance Standard (NASA Technical Standard)
 TC 176/SC (2005). ISO 9000:2005, Quality Management
Systems ­­ Fundamentals and vocabulary
 James A. Bednar, D. Robertson (2005), Software Quality and
Standards