ategory Design Qualities

Quality attribute Conceptual Integrity

Description Conceptual integrity defines the consistency and coherence of the overall design. This includes the way that components or modules are designed, as well as factors such as coding style and variable naming. Maintainability is the ability of the system to undergo changes with a degree of ease. These changes could impact components, services, features, and interfaces when adding or changing the functionality, fixing errors, and meeting new business requirements. Reusability defines the capability for components and subsystems to be suitable for use in other applications and in other scenarios. Reusability minimizes the duplication of components and also the implementation time. Availability defines the proportion of time that the system is functional and working. It can be measured as a percentage of the total system downtime over a predefined period. Availability will be affected by system errors, infrastructure problems, malicious attacks, and system load. Interoperability is the ability of a system or different systems to operate successfully by communicating and exchanging information with other external systems written and run by external parties. An interoperable system makes it easier to exchange and reuse information internally as well as externally. Manageability defines how easy it is for system administrators to manage the application, usually through sufficient and useful instrumentation exposed for use in monitoring systems and for debugging and performance tuning. Performance is an indication of the responsiveness of a system to execute any action within a given time interval. It can be measured in terms of latency or throughput. Latency is the time taken to respond to any event. Throughput is the number of events that take place within a given amount of time. Reliability is the ability of a system to remain operational over time. Reliability is measured as the probability that a system will not fail to perform its intended functions over a specified time interval. Scalability is ability of a system to either handle increases in load without impact on the performance of the system, or the ability to be readily enlarged. Security is the capability of a system to prevent malicious or accidental actions outside of the designed usage, and to prevent disclosure or loss of information. A secure system aims to protect assets and prevent unauthorized modification of information.

Maintainability

Reusability

Run-time Qualities

Availability

Interoperability

Manageability

Performance

Reliability

Scalability

Security

System Qualities

Supportability

Supportability is the ability of the system to provide information helpful for identifying and resolving issues when it fails to work correctly. Testability is a measure of how easy it is to create test criteria for the system and its components, and to execute these tests in order to determine if the criteria are met. Good testability makes it more likely that faults in a system can be isolated in a timely and effective manner. Usability defines how well the application meets the requirements of the user and consumer by being intuitive, easy to localize and globalize, providing good access for disabled users, and resulting in a good overall user experience.

Testability

User Qualities

Usability

Quality Software

Good software

Basically there are FOUR ( 4 ) attributes of a good software ... 1. Maintainability The software should be written in a way that it can be evolve to meet changing needs of the customer . Since the change of needs ( requirement change of customer ) is unavoidable, this is a CRITICAL ATTRIBUTE .2. DependabilityA software MUST be Trustworthy ( can we trust the software ? ) , Reliable , Safe andSecured ( are we secured using this software ? ) . Use of the software should not be harmful to the customer in anyway ( even something goes wrong ) . Even at a system failure, a dependable software should NOT cause physical or economical damage . Also malicious users should not be able to access or damage the system .3. EfficiencyA software should be efficient in everyway . The software should not make wasteful of system resources ( ex. memory, processing cycles ) . Responsiveness should be there, and the memory utilization should be minimum and also the processing time is a consideration .4. AcceptabilityThe software must be acceptable to the group of users for which it's designed for . Software should be understandable , reliable and compatible with other systems they use .

Prototyping[edit]
Software prototyping, is the development approach of activities during software development, the creation of prototypes, i.e., incomplete versions of the software program being developed. The basic principles are:
[2]

Not a standalone, complete development methodology, but rather an approach to handle selected parts of a larger, more traditional development methodology (i.e. incremental, spiral, or rapid application development (RAD)). Attempts to reduce inherent project risk by breaking a project into smaller segments and providing more ease-of-change during the development process.

User is involved throughout the development process, which increases the likelihood of user acceptance of the final implementation. Small-scale mock-ups of the system are developed following an iterative modification process until the prototype evolves to meet the users requirements. While most prototypes are developed with the expectation that they will be discarded, it is possible in some cases to evolve from prototype to working system. A basic understanding of the fundamental business problem is necessary to avoid solving the wrong problem.

Incremental development[edit]
Various methods are acceptable for combining linear and iterative systems development methodologies, with the primary objective of each being to reduce inherent project risk by breaking a project into smaller segments and providing more ease-of-change during the development process. The basic principles are:
[2]

A series of mini-Waterfalls are performed, where all phases of the Waterfall are completed for a small part of a system, before proceeding to the next increment, or Overall requirements are defined before proceeding to evolutionary, mini-Waterfall development of individual increments of a system, or The initial software concept, requirements analysis, and design of architecture and system core are defined via Waterfall, followed by iterative Prototyping, which culminates in installing the final prototype, a working system.

Recovery testing is the forced failure of the software in a variety of ways to verify that recovery is properly performed. Recovery testing should not be confused with reliability testing, which tries to discover the specific point at which failure occurs.Recovery testing is basically done in order to check how fast and better the application can recover against any type of crash or hardware failure etc Robustness testing is any quality assurance methodology focused on testing the robustness of software. Robustness testing has also been used to describe the process of verifying the robustness (i.e. correctness) of test cases in a test process. ANSI and IEEE have defined robustness as the degree to which a system or component can function correctly in the presence of invalid inputs or stressful environmental conditions Boundary value analysis: Its widely recognized that input values at the extreme ends of input domain cause more errors in system. More application errors occur at the boundaries of input domain. Boundary value analysis testing technique is used to identify errors at boundaries rather than finding those exist in center of input domain

Alpha testing[edit]

Alpha testing is simulated or actual operational testing by potential users/customers or an independent test team at the developers' site. Alpha testing is often employed for off-the-shelf software as a form of [35] internal acceptance testing, before the software goes to beta testing.

Beta testing[edit]
Beta testing comes after alpha testing and can be considered a form of external user acceptance testing. Versions of the software, known as beta versions, are released to a limited audience outside of the programming team. The software is released to groups of people so that further testing can ensure the product has few faults or bugs. Sometimes, beta versions are made available to the open public to increase the feedback field to a maximal number of future users

Rapid application development (RAD) is a software development methodology that uses minimal planning in favor of rapid prototyping. The "planning" of software developed using RAD is interleaved with writing the software itself. The lack of extensive pre-planning generally allows software to be written much faster, and makes it easier to change requirements. 1. Requirements Planning phase combines elements of the system planning and systems analysis phases of the Systems Development Life Cycle (SDLC). Users, managers, and IT staff members discuss and agree on business needs, project scope, constraints, and system requirements. It ends when the team agrees on the key issues and obtains management authorization to continue. 2. User design phase during this phase, users interact with systems analysts and develop models and prototypes that represent all system processes, inputs, and outputs. The RAD groups or subgroups typically use a combination of Joint Application Development (JAD) techniques and CASE tools to translate user needs into working models. User Design is a continuous interactive process that allows users to understand, modify, and eventually approve a working model of the system that meets their needs. 3. Construction phase focuses on program and application development task similar to the SDLC. In RAD, however, users continue to participate and can still suggest changes or improvements as actual screens or reports are developed. Its tasks are programming and application development, coding, unit-integration and system testing. 4. Cutover phase resembles the final tasks in the SDLC implementation phase, including data conversion, testing, changeover to the new system, and user training. Compared with traditional methods, the entire process is compressed. As a result, the new system is built, delivered, and placed in operation much sooner.

Advantages

Flexible and adaptable to changes Can handle large projects without a doubt RAD realizes an overall reduction in project risk RAD realizes an overall reduction in project risk.

Generally Rad incorporates short development cycles (According to the wiki.answer.com)