Quality Management

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 
ectives
 To introduce the quality management process and
key quality management activities
 To explain the role of standards in quality
management
 To explain the concept of a software metric,
predictor metrics and control metrics
 To explain how measurement may e used in
assessing software quality and the limitations of
software measurement

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 Topics covered

 Process and product quality

 Quality assurance and standards
 Quality planning
 Quality control

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 moftware quality management
 Concerned with ensuring that the required
level of quality is achieved in a software
product.
 Involves defining appropriate quality
standards and procedures and ensuring that
these are followed.
 mhould aim to develop a µquality culture¶
where quality is seen as everyone¶s
responsi ility.

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 ÿhat is quality?

 Quality, simplistically, means that a product should

meet its specification.
 This is pro lematical for software systems
‡ There is a tension etween customer quality requirements
(efficiency, relia ility, etc.) and developer quality
requirements (maintaina ility, reusa ility, etc.);
‡ mome quality requirements are difficult to specify in an
unam iguous way;
‡ moftware specifications are usually incomplete and often
inconsistent.

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 The quality compromise
 ÿe cannot wait for specifications to improve
efore paying attention to quality
management.
 ÿe must put quality management
procedures into place to improve quality in
spite of imperfect specification.

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 mcope of quality management
 Quality management is particularly important
for large, complex systems. The quality
documentation is a record of progress and
supports continuity of development as the
development team changes.
 For smaller systems, quality management
needs less documentation and should focus
on esta lishing a quality culture.

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 Quality management activities
 Quality assurance
‡ Esta lish organisational procedures and standards for
quality.
 Quality planning
‡ melect applica le procedures and standards for a
particular pro
ect and modify these as required.
 Quality control
‡ Ensure that procedures and standards are followed y the
software development team.
 Quality management should e separate from
pro
ect management to ensure independence.

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 Quality management and software development

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 Process and product quality
 The quality of a developed product is
influenced y the quality of the production
process.
 This is important in software development as
some product quality attri utes are hard to
assess.
 However, there is a very complex and poorly
understood relationship etween software
processes and product quality.

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 Process- ased quality
 There is a straightforward link etween process and
product in manufactured goods.
 More complex for software ecause:
‡ The application of individual skills and experience is
particularly imporant in software development;
‡ External factors such as the novelty of an application or
the need for an accelerated development schedule may
impair product quality.
 Care must e taken not to impose inappropriate
process standards - these could reduce rather than
improve the product quality.

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 Process- ased quality

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 Practical process quality
 §efine process standards such as how
reviews should e conducted, configuration
management, etc.
 Monitor the development process to ensure
that standards are eing followed.
 Report on the process to pro
ect
management and software procurer.
 §on¶t use inappropriate practices simply
ecause standards have een esta lished.

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 Quality assurance and standards
 mtandards are the key to effective quality
management.
 They may e international, national,
organizational or pro
ect standards.
 Product standards define characteristics that
all components should exhi it e.g. a common
programming style.
 Process standards define how the software
process should e enacted.

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 Importance of standards
 Encapsulation of est practice- avoids
repetition of past mistakes.
 They are a framework for quality assurance
processes - they involve checking
compliance to standards.
 They provide continuity - new staff can
understand the organisation y
understanding the standards that are used.

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 Product and process standards

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 Pro lems with standards
 They may not e seen as relevant and up-to-
date y software engineers.
 They often involve too much ureaucratic
form filling.
 If they are unsupported y software tools,
tedious manual work is often involved to
maintain the documentation associated with
the standards.

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 mtandards development
 Involve practitioners in development. Engineers
should understand the rationale underlying a
standard.
 Review standards and their usage regularly.
mtandards can quickly ecome outdated and this
reduces their credi ility amongst practitioners.
 §etailed standards should have associated tool
support. Excessive clerical work is the most
significant complaint against standards.

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 Im 9000
 An international set of standards for quality
management.
 Applica le to a range of organisations from
manufacturing to service industries.
 Im 9001 applica le to organisations which
design, develop and maintain products.
 Im 9001 is a generic model of the quality
process that must e instantiated for each
organisation using the standard.

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 Im 9001

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 Im 9000 certification

 Quality standards and procedures should e

documented in an organisational quality
manual.
 An external ody may certify that an
organisation¶s quality manual conforms to
Im 9000 standards.
 mome customers require suppliers to e Im
9000 certified although the need for flexi ility
here is increasingly recognised.

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Im 9000 and quality management

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 §ocumentation standards
 Particularly important - documents are the tangi le
manifestation of the software.
 §ocumentation process standards
‡ Concerned with how documents should e developed,
validated and maintained.
 §ocument standards
‡ Concerned with document contents, structure, and
appearance.
 §ocument interchange standards
‡ Concerned with the compati ility of electronic documents.

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 §ocumentation process

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 §ocument standards
 §ocument identification standards
‡ How documents are uniquely identified.
 §ocument structure standards
‡ mtandard structure for pro
ect documents.
 §ocument presentation standards
‡ §efine fonts and styles, use of logos, etc.
 §ocument update standards
‡ §efine how changes from previous versions are
reflected in a document.

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 §ocument interchange standards
 Interchange standards allow electronic documents to
e exchanged, mailed, etc.
 §ocuments are produced using different systems
and on different computers. Even when standard
tools are used, standards are needed to define
conventions for their use e.g. use of style sheets and
macros.
 Need for archiving. The lifetime of word processing
systems may e much less than the lifetime of the
software eing documented. An archiving standard
may e defined to ensure that the document can e
accessed in future.

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 Quality planning
 A quality plan sets out the desired product
qualities and how these are assessed and
defines the most significant quality attri utes.
 The quality plan should define the quality
assessment process.
 It should set out which organisational
standards should e applied and, where
necessary, define new standards to e used.

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 Quality plans
 Quality plan structure
‡ Product introduction;
‡ Product plans;
‡ Process descriptions;
‡ Quality goals;
‡ Risks and risk management.
 Quality plans should e short, succinct
documents
‡ If they are too long, no-one will read them.

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 moftware quality attri utes

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 Quality control
 This involves checking the software
development process to ensure that
procedures and standards are eing
followed.
 There are two approaches to quality control
‡ Quality reviews;
‡ Automated software assessment and software
measurement.

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 Quality reviews
 This is the principal method of validating the quality
of a process or of a product.
 A group examines part or all of a process or system
and its documentation to find potential pro lems.
 There are different types of review with different
o
ectives
‡ Inspections for defect removal (product);
‡ Reviews for progress assessment (product and process);
‡ Quality reviews (product and standards).

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 Types of review

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 Quality reviews
 A group of people carefully examine part or all
of a software system and its associated
documentation.
 Code, designs, specifications, test plans,
standards, etc. can all e reviewed.
 moftware or documents may e 'signed off' at a
review which signifies that progress to the next
development stage has een approved y
management.

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 Review functions
 Quality function - they are part of the general
quality management process.
 Pro
ect management function - they provide
information for pro
ect managers.
 Training and communication function -
product knowledge is passed etween
development team mem ers.

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 Quality reviews
 The o
ective is the discovery of system
defects and inconsistencies.
 Any documents produced in the process may
e reviewed.
 Review teams should e relatively small and
reviews should e fairly short.
 Records should always e maintained of
quality reviews.

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 Review results
 Comments made during the review should e
classified
‡ No action. No change to the software or documentation is
required;
‡ Refer for repair. §esigner or programmer should correct
an identified fault;
‡ Reconsider overall design. The pro lem identified in the
review impacts other parts of the design. mome overall

udgement must e made a out the most cost-effective
way of solving the pro lem;
 Requirements and specification errors may
have to e referred to the client.

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moftware measurement and metrics
 moftware measurement is concerned with deriving a
numeric value for an attri ute of a software product
or process.
 This allows for o
ective comparisons etween
techniques and processes.
 Although some companies have introduced
measurement programmes, most organisations still
don¶t make systematic use of software
measurement.
 There are few esta lished standards in this area.

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 moftware metric

 Any type of measurement which relates to a

software system, process or related documentation
‡ Lines of code in a program, the Fog index, num er of
person-days required to develop a component.
 Allow the software and the software process to
e quantified.
 May e used to predict product attri utes or to
control the software process.
 Product metrics can e used for general predictions
or to identify anomalous components.

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 Predictor and control metrics

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 Metrics assumptions
 A software property can e measured.
 The relationship exists etween what we can
measure and what we want to know. ÿe can only
measure internal attri utes ut are often more
interested in external software attri utes.
 This relationship has een formalised and
validated.
 It may e difficult to relate what can e measured to
desira le external quality attri utes.

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 Internal and external attri utes

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 The measurement process
 A software measurement process may e
part of a quality control process.
 §ata collected during this process should e
maintained as an organisational resource.
 nce a measurement data ase has een
esta lished, comparisons across pro
ects
ecome possi le.

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 Product measurement process

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 §ata collection
 A metrics programme should e ased on a
set of product and process data.
 §ata should e collected immediately (not in
retrospect) and, if possi le, automatically.
 Three types of automatic data collection
‡ mtatic product analysis;
‡ §ynamic product analysis;
‡ Process data collation.

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 §ata accuracy
 §on¶t collect unnecessary data
‡ The questions to e answered should e
decided in advance and the required data
identified.
 Tell people why the data is eing collected.
‡ It should not e part of personnel evaluation.
 §on¶t rely on memory
‡ Collect data when it is generated not after a
pro
ect has finished.

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 Product metrics
 A quality metric should e a predictor of
product quality.
 Classes of product metric
‡ §ynamic metrics which are collected y measurements
made of a program in execution;
‡ mtatic metrics which are collected y measurements
made of the system representations;
‡ §ynamic metrics help assess efficiency and relia ility;
static metrics help assess complexity, understanda ility
and maintaina ility.

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 §ynamic and static metrics
 §ynamic metrics are closely related to software
quality attri utes
‡ It is relatively easy to measure the response time of a
system (performance attri ute) or the num er of failures
(relia ility attri ute).
 mtatic metrics have an indirect relationship with
quality attri utes
‡ You need to try and derive a relationship etween these
metrics and properties such as complexity,
understanda ility and maintaina ility.

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 moftware product metrics
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 
ect-oriented metrics
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 Measurement analysis
 It is not always o vious what data means
‡ Analysing collected data is very difficult.
 Professional statisticians should e
consulted if availa le.
 §ata analysis must take local circumstances
into account.

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 Measurement surprises
 Reducing the num er of faults in a program
leads to an increased num er of help desk
calls
‡ The program is now thought of as more relia le
and so has a wider more diverse market. The
percentage of users who call the help desk may
have decreased ut the total may increase;
‡ A more relia le system is used in a different
way from a system where users work around
the faults. This leads to more help desk calls.

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 ¢ey points
 moftware quality management is concerned
with ensuring that software meets its
required standards.
 Quality assurance procedures should e
documented in an organisational quality
manual.
 moftware standards are an encapsulation of
est practice.
 Reviews are the most widely used approach
for assessing software quality.

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 ¢ey points
 moftware measurement gathers information
a out oth the software process and the
software product.
 Product quality metrics should e used to
identify potentially pro lematical
components.
 There are no standardised and universally
applica le software metrics.

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