8 Quality Management
8 Quality Management
8 Quality Management
Software Engineering
Slide 1
Software Engineering
Slide 2
Objectives
To introduce the quality management process and key quality management activities To explain the role of standards in quality management To explain the relationship between quality attributes and software metrics To explain how measurement may be used in assessing software quality
Software Quality Management Slide 3
Software Engineering
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 Should aim to develop a quality culture where quality is seen as everyones responsibility
Software Engineering
Slide 4
What is quality?
Quality, simplistically, means that a product should meet its specification This is problematical for software systems Tension between customer quality requirements (efficiency, reliability, etc.) and developer quality requirements (maintainability, reusability, etc.) Some quality requirements are difficult to specify in an unambiguous way Software specifications are usually incomplete and often inconsistent
Software Quality Management Slide 5
Software Engineering
Software Engineering
Slide 6
Satisfies clearly stated requirements Checks its inputs and that it reacts in predictable ways to illegal inputs Has been inspected thoroughly by others Has been tested exhaustively by others Is thoroughly documented Has a known defect rate
Software Quality Management Slide 7
Software Engineering
We cannot wait for specifications to improve before paying attention to quality management Must put procedures into place to improve quality in spite of imperfect specification Quality management is therefore not just concerned with reducing defects but also with other product qualities
Software Quality Management Slide 8
Software Engineering
2. Identify process
Quality Planning
QA
2. QA reviews process for conformance to organizational policy 3. QA develops and/or reviews provision for QA activities
3. Plan
Slide 9
Quality Control
Adapted from Engineering Software Engineering: An Object-Oriented Perspective by Eric J. Braude (Wiley Management 2001), with permission. Software Software Quality
Standards are the key to effective quality management They may be international, national, organizational or project standards Product standards define characteristics that all components should exhibit e.g. a common programming style Process standards define how the software process should be enacted
Software Quality Management Slide 12
Software Engineering
Importance of standards
Encapsulation of best practice- avoids repetition of past mistakes Framework for quality assurance process it involves checking standard compliance Provide continuity - new staff can understand the organisation by understand the standards applied
Software Engineering
Slide 13
ISO 9000
International set of standards for quality management Applicable to a range of organisations from manufacturing to service industries ISO 9001 applicable to organisations which design, develop and maintain products ISO 9001 is a generic model of the quality process that must be instantiated for each organisation
Software Quality Management Slide 15
Software Engineering
Supports
Software Engineering Software Quality Management Slide 17
Not seen as relevant and up-to-date by software engineers Involve too much bureaucratic form filling Unsupported by software tools so tedious manual work is involved to maintain standards
Software Engineering
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Involve practitioners in development. Engineers should understand the rationale underlying a standard Review standards and their usage regularly. Standards can quickly become outdated and this reduces their credibility amongst practitioners Detailed standards should have associated tool support. Excessive clerical work is the most significant complaint against standards
Software Quality Management Slide 19
Software Engineering
The quality of a developed product is influenced by the quality of the production process Form (product) follows function (process) Particularly important in software development as some product quality attributes are hard to assess However, there is a very complex and poorly understood relationship between software processes and product quality
Software Quality Management Slide 20
Software Engineering
Process-based quality
Straightforward link between process and product in manufactured goods More complex for software because: 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 be taken not to impose inappropriate process standards
Software Quality Management Slide 21
Software Engineering
Process-based quality
Define process
De velop product
Improve process
No
Quality OK
Yes
Software Engineering
Slide 22
Quality planning
A quality plan sets out the desired product qualities and how these are assessed and define the most significant quality attributes It should define the quality assessment process It should set out which organisational standards should be applied and, if necessary, define new standards
Software Engineering
Slide 24
Product introduction Product plans Process descriptions Quality goals Risks and risk management Quality plans should be short, succinct documents If they are too long, no-one will read them
Software Quality Management Slide 25
Software Engineering
6. Reviews and audits 6.1 Purpose 6.2 Minimum requirements 6.2.1 Software requirements review 6.2.2 Preliminary design review 6.2.3 Critical design review 6.2.4 SVVP review 6.2.5 Functional audit 6.2.6 Physical audit 6.2.7 In-process audits 6.2.8 Managerial review 6.2.9 SCMP review 6.2.10 Post mortem review 6.3 Other
Slide 26
Quality control
Checking the software development process to ensure that procedures and standards are being followed Two approaches to quality control
Software Engineering
Slide 28
Quality reviews
The principal method of validating the quality of a process or of a product Group examines part or all of a process or system and its documentation to find potential problems There are different types of review with different objectives Inspections for defect removal (product) Reviews for progress assessment(product and process) Quality reviews (product and standards)
Software Quality Management Slide 29
Software Engineering
Using 5 Cards and 2 pieces of tape construct a platform which can withstand the repeated drop (3 times) of a pack of post-it notes from 1 inch The end product must: Be at least one card high Not have any folded cards Make efficient use of resources (minimize where possible) Be portable The end product should be of high quality: Extensible (capable of enhancement) Adaptable (capable requirements change) Portable (applicable to several environments) Reusable (applicable to different situations)
Software Quality Management Slide 30
Software Engineering
Team Work
(4 people)
Software Engineering
Slide 31
Software measurement is concerned with deriving a numeric value for an attribute of a software product or process Software metric is any type of measurement which relates to a software system, process or related documentation This allows for objective comparisons between techniques and processes There are few standards, no systematic use
Software Engineering
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A software property can be measured A relationship exists between what we can measure and a quality attribute This relationship has been formalized and validated
Software Engineering
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A software measurement process may be part of a quality control process Data collected during this process should be maintained as an organisational resource Once a measurement database has been established, comparisons across projects become possible
Software Quality Management Slide 35
Software Engineering
Product metrics
A quality metric should be a predictor of product quality Classes of product metric Dynamic metrics which are collected by measurements made of a program in execution Static metrics which are collected by measurements made of the system representations Dynamic metrics help assess efficiency and reliability; static metrics help assess complexity, understandability and maintainability
Software Quality Management Slide 36
Software Engineering
Dynamic metrics are closely related to software quality attributes Collected by a program in execution (response time, number of failures) Help assess efficiency, effectiveness, availability and reliability Static metrics have an indirect relationship with quality attributes Collected from system representation (lines of code) Help assess complexity, understandability and maintainability
Software Quality Management Slide 37
Software Engineering
Length of code
Cyclomatic complexit y Length of ident ifiers Depth of conditional nesting Fog index
Software Engineering
Object-oriented metrics
Objectoriented metric Depth of inheritance tree Description This represents the number of discrete levels in the inheritance tree where sub-classes inherit attributes and operations (methods) from super-classes. The deeper the inheritance tree, the more complex the design as, potentially, many different object classes have to be understood to understand the object classes at the leaves of the tree. This is directly related to fan-in and fan-out as described above and means essentially the same thing. However, it may be appropriate to make a distinction between calls from other methods within the object and calls from external methods. This is the number of methods included in a class weighted by the complexity of each method. Therefore, a simple method may have a complexity of 1 and a large and complex method a much higher value. The larger the value for this metric, the more complex the object class. Complex objects are more likely to be more difficult to understand. They may not be logically cohesive so cannot be reused effectively as superclasses in an inheritance tree. These are the number of operations in a super-class which are over-ridden in a sub-class. A high value for this metric indicates that the super-class used may not be an appropriate parent for the sub-class.
Software Quality Management
Method fanin/fan-out
Slide 39