Describe the Software Quality Assurance

Quality Assurance can be defined as the “planned and a systematic pattern of all the actions necessary to provide an adequate confidence that the item or the project conforms to the established technical requirements”
Software Quality Assurance in a true sense acts as an umbrella activity that is actually implied through the software process. Software Quality Assurance helps in the reduction of the amount of the re – work that it must do and which further results in the lowering of the costs and the improved time to the market.

Software Quality Assurance should be able to –

a. Provide for the exhaustive testing.
b. Obtain a mathematical proof of the correctness.
c. Convince one- self that the output from the each phase of the development process is functionally equal to its predecessor.

Software Quality Assurance group has the responsibility for preparing the Software Quality Assurance plan. This plan is very helpful in the identification of the following –

1. Evaluations to be performed.
2. The audits and the reviews to be performed.
3. Standards, those are applicable to the project.
4. Procedures for the error reporting and also for the tracking.
5. Documents to be produced by the SQL group.
6. Amount of the feedback provided to the software projects team.

Responsibilities of the Software Quality Assurance Group

1. Help in the recording of the non – compliance and the reports to the senior management.
2. Helps in the identification of the documents and the tracks deviations from the process and ultimately helps in the verification of the corrections that have been made.
3. Software Quality Assurance group audit designated software work products to help in the verification of the compliance with those defined as the part of the process.
4. Help in documenting the deviations in the software work and also in the work products.

Formal Quality Assurance Measures
The Formal Quality Assurance structure always requires to be made around the ISO – 9000 standard. ISO – 9001 refers or defines a certain set of the requirements that are very much essential for the quality management. It generally involves the quality assurance, quality control, process control, change management and the formal review. ISO – 9001 is said to be requiring some specific additional traits or the features, mainly for the development of the software.

ISO – 9001 standard with the IEEE – 1298 standards and the ISO – 9000. 3 Guidelines would be needed for the software quality assurance.

For the achievement of the Formal Quality Assurance, the following factors should be kept in mind –

a. Proposed by Kaposi and Kitchen Ham.
b. For ensuring the Quality Assurance, it is very much important to keep in view the quality profile of the software.
c. This model acts as a very critical way of structuring the analysis of the quality of a piece of software.

2. Constructive Quality Model –

a. Known as the ‘COQUAMO’.
b. Helps in the measurement of the Quality Factor Metrics.
c. Also helps in the measurement of the Quality indicators and the measures of the quality drivers.
d. In each stage of the life – cycle, check – lists are used for the monitoring of the progress taking place towards the achievement of the quality factor.

3. “Tick IT” Initiative –

a. The main focus of this initiative is based on the development of the software.
b. Ensures that the developers can deliver the quality.
c. Acts as a structured material of guidance for the application of ISO – 9001.
d. Includes the ISO – 9000. 3 document.
e. The Tick IT initiative further consists of the two main components –

i. A quality management certification scheme mainly for the software and the IT industries.
ii. An awareness program, which helps in the raising of the level of the understanding of what quality, is and how it may be achieved among the professionals that also with – in the industry.
f. But also gives rise to a large number of other problems.