Software quality assurance (SQA) involves planning and implementing activities throughout development to ensure quality. SQA includes standards, reviews, testing, defect tracking, and risk management. Statistical SQA categorizes defects and identifies their root causes to improve processes. Reviews are important for uncovering errors and should involve preparation, focus on the work product, and result in accepting or rejecting the product. Metrics collected from reviews indicate their effectiveness at defect detection and removal.

1. Software Quality Assurance

2. Recap
• What is testing?
• Who does testing?
• Why do we do testing?
• Software testing process?
• Software Testing
– Levels of testing
– Methods/techniques of testing
• Test cases
• Writing effective test cases

3. What is SQA?
• Software Quality Assurance is an umbrella activity that is applied
throughout the software process...

4. What is quality?
• Quality refers to any measurable characteristics such as
correctness, maintainability, portability, testability, usability,
reliability, efficiency, integrity, reusability and interoperability.

5. Quality terminologies
• Quality of Design refers to the characteristics that designer’s specify for an item.
• Quality of Conformance is the degree to which the design specifications are followed
during manufacturing.
• Quality Control is the series of inspections, reviews and tests used throughout the
development cycle to ensure that each work product meets the requirements placed
upon it.
• Quality policy refers to the basic aims and objectives of an organization regarding
quality as stipulated by the management.
• Quality assurance consists of the auditing and reporting functions of management.
• Cost of Quality includes all costs incurred in the pursuit of quality or in performing
quality related activities such as appraisal costs, failure costs and external failure
costs.
• Quality planning is the process of assessing the requirements of the procedure and of
the product and the context in which these must be observed.
• Quality testing is assessment of the extent to which a test object meets given
requirements
• Quality assurance plan is the central aid for planning and checking the quality
assurance.
• Quality assurance system is the organizational structure, responsibilities, procedures,
processes and resources for implementing quality management.

6. Relative cost of correcting an error?

7. Elements of S/W Quality Assurance
• Standards
• Reviews and audits
• Testing
• Error/defect collection and analysis
• Change management
• Education
• Vendor management
• Security management
• Safety
• Risk management

8. SQA tasks
• Prepares an SQA plan for a project
• Participates in the development of the project’s software process
description
• Reviews software engineering activities to verify compliance with
the defined software process
• Audits designated software work products to verify compliance with
those defined as part of the software process
• Ensures that deviations in software work and work products are
documented and handled according to a documented procedure
• Records and noncompliance and reports to senior management

9. SQA Goals, Attributes and Metrics
Goals
Requirement quality
Design quality
Attributes
• Ambiguity
• Completeness
• Understandability
• Volatility
• Traceability
• Model clarity
• Architectural integrity
• Component
completeness
• Interface complexity
• Patterns
Metric
• Number of ambiguous modifiers (e.g.,
many, large, human-friendly)
• Number of TBAs, TBDs
• Number of sections/subsections
• Number of changes per requirement
• Time (by activity) when change is
requested
• Number of requirements not traceable
to design/code
• Number of UML models
• Number of descriptive pages per
model
• Number of UML errors
• Existence of architectural model
• Number of components that trace to
architectural model
• Complexity of procedural design
• Layout appropriateness
• Number of patterns used

10. SQA Goals, Attributes and Metrics
Goals
Code quality
QC effectiveness
Attributes
• Complexity
• Maintainability
• Understandability
• Reusability
• Documentation
• Resource allocation
• Completion rate
• Review effectiveness
• Testing
effectiveness
Metric
• Cyclomatic complexity
• Design factors
• Percent internal comments
• Variable naming conventions
• Percent reused components
• Readability index
• Staff hour percentage per activity
• Actual vs. budgeted completion time
• Review metrics
• Number of errors found and criticality
• Effort required to correct an error
• Origin of error

11. SQA plan
• Management section
– describes the place of SQA in the structure of the organization
• Documentation section
– describes each work product produced as part of the software process
• Standards, practices, and conventions section
– lists all applicable standards/practices applied during the software process and
any metrics to be collected as part of the software engineering work
• Reviews and audits section
– provides an overview of the approach used in the reviews and audits to be
conducted during the project
• Test section
– references the test plan and procedure document and defines test record
keeping requirements
• Problem reporting and corrective action section
– defines procedures for reporting, tracking, and resolving errors or defects,
identifies organizational responsibilities for these activities
• Other
– tools, SQA methods, change control, record keeping, training, and risk
management

12. Statistical SQA
• Information about software defects is collected and categorized
• An attempt is made to trace each defect to its underlying cause
• Isolate the vital few causes of the major source of all errors
• Then move to correct the problems that have caused the defects

13. Statistical SQA – Categories of errors
• Incomplete or erroneous specification (IES)
• Misinterpretation of customer comm (MCC)
• Intentional deviation from specification (IDS)
• Violation of programming standards (VPS)
• Error in data representation (EDR)
• Inconsistent module interface (IMI)
• Error in design logic (EDL)
• Incomplete or erroneous testing (IET)
• Inaccurate or incomplete documentation (IID)
• Error in programming lang. Translation (PLT)
• Ambiguous or inconsistent human-computer interface (HCI)
• Miscellaneous (MIS)
• Most often IES, MCC and EDR are the vital few causes for majority
of errors.

14. Identifying the vital few

15. Statistical SQA

16. Example

17. Statistical SQA – Six Sigma
• Most widely used strategy for statistical SQA
• Three core steps
– Define customer requirements, deliverables and project goals via well-defined
methods of customer communication
– Measure the existing process and its output to determine quality
– Analyze defect metrics and determine the vital few causes
• If an existing software process is in place, but improvement is required six
sigma suggests
– Improve the process by eliminating the root causes of defects
– Control the process to ensure that future work does not reintroduce the cases of
defects
• If an organization is developing a software process, the core steps are
augmented
– Design the process to (1) avoid the root causes of defects and (2) to meet
customer requirements
– Verify that the process model will, in fact, avoid defects and meet customer
requirements

18. Reviews To uncover errors/defects
• To uncover errors in function, logic, or implementation
for any representation of the software
• To verify that software meets its requirements
• To ensure that software representation meets predefined
standards
• To achieve software development in a uniform manner
• To make projects more manageable

19. Review Roles
• Presenter (designer/producer).
• Coordinator (not person who hires/fires).
• Recorder
– records events of meeting
– builds paper trail
• Reviewers
– maintenance oracle
– standards bearer
– user representative
– others

20. Formal Technical Reviews
• Involves 3 to 5 people (including reviewers)
• Advance preparation (no more than 2 hours per person) required
• Duration of review meeting should be less than 2 hours
• Focus of review is on a discrete work product
• Review leader organizes the review meeting at the producer's
request.
• Reviewers ask questions that enable the producer to discover his or
her own error (the product is under review not the producer)
• Producer of the work product walks the reviewers through the
product
• Recorder writes down any significant issues raised during the
review
• Reviewers decide to accept or reject the work product and whether
to require additional reviews of product or not.

21. Formality and Timing
• Formal review presentations
– resemble conference presentations.
• Informal presentations
– less detailed, but equally correct.
• Early
– tend to be informal
– may not have enough information
• Later
– tend to be more formal
– Feedback may come too late to avoid rework

22. Formality and Timing
• Analysis is complete.
• Design is complete.
• After first compilation.
• After first test run.
• After all test runs.
• Any time you complete an activity that produce a complete work
product.

23. Why do peer reviews?
• To improve quality.
• Catches 80% of all errors if done properly.
• Catches both coding errors and design errors.
• Enforce the spirit of any organization standards.
• Training and insurance.

24. Review Guidelines..
• Review the product, not
producer
• Set an agenda and
maintain it
• Limit the debate
• Enunciate problem areas,
not to solve every problem
noted
• Take written notes
• Allocate resources and
time schedule for FTR’s
• Use standards to avoid
style disagreements.
• Let the coordinator run the
meeting and maintain
order.
• Limit the number of
participants and insist upon
advance preparation
• Develop a checklist for
each work product to be
reviewed
• Training for all reviewer’s
• Reviewing earlier reviews
Keep it short (< 30
minutes).
• Don’t schedule two in a
row.
• Don’t review product
fragments.

25. Effectiveness of review  Defect
Amplification and Removal
Errors passed through
Amplified errors 1:x
Newly identified errors
Percent
efficiency
for error
detection
Errors from
previous steps Errors passed
to next step
Development step
Defects Detection
• Used to illustrate the generation and detection of errors during
design and code generation

26. Effectiveness of review  Defect
Amplification and Removal
No reviews
With reviews

27. Effectiveness of review  Defect
Amplification and Removal

28. Example

29. Review metrics and their use
• Many metrics can be defined for technical reviews
• The following can be calculated for each review
conducted:
– Preparation effort (Ep)
– Assessment effort (Ea)
– Rework effort (Er)
– Work product size (WPS)
– Minor errors found (Errminor)
– Major errors found (Errmajor)

30. Analyzing review metrics
• Total review effort (Ereview)
– Ereview = Ep + Ea + Er
• Total number of errors (Errtot)
– Errtot = Errminor + Errmajor
• Error density represents the errors found per unit of work product
reviewed
– Error density = Errtot / WPS
• Cost effectiveness of reviews
– Effort saved per error = Etesting – Ereviews

31. Effectiveness of review  Defect
Amplification and Removal
No reviews
With reviews

32. Effectiveness of review  Defect
Amplification and Removal

33. Software reliability
• Defined as the probability of failure free operation of a computer
program in a specified environment for a specified time.
• Can be measured directly and estimated using historical and
developmental data (unlike many other software quality factors)
• Software reliability problems can usually be traced back to errors in
design or implementation.
• Reliability metrics are units of measure for system reliability
• System reliability is measured by counting the number of
operational failures and relating these to demands made on the
system at the time of failure
• A long-term measurement program is required to assess the
reliability of critical systems

34. Measuring S/W reliability
• A measure of software reliability is mean time between failures
where
• MTBF = MTTF + MTTR
• MTTF = mean time to failure
• MTTR = mean time to repair
• Availability =MTTF/(MTTF + MTTR) * 100%
• Software availability is the probability that a program is operating
according to requirements at a given point in time

35. Example

36. Software reliability -- Software safety
• Processes that help reduce the probability that critical
failures will occur due to SW
• Hazard analyses
– Identify hazards that could call failure
– Develop fault tree
– Identify all possible causes of the hazard
– Formally review the remedy for each
• Redundancy
• Require a written software safety plan
• Require independent verification & validation

37. Example Fault Tree -- Thermal
Loss of heatLoss of heat
Power failurePower failure Computer failureComputer failure IncorrectIncorrect
inputinput
SW failedSW failed
to throwto throw
switchswitch
......
Computer failureComputer failure SW failedSW failed
to throwto throw
switchswitch
...... Logic reversedLogic reversed

38. Software Safety
• Redundancy
– Replicated at the hardware level
– Similar vs.. dis-similar redundancy
• Verification
– Assuring that the software specifications are met
• Validation
– Assuring that the product functions as desired
• Independence

39. 23
• ISO 9000 describes QA elements in generic terms
– Elements include organizational structure, procedures, processes
and resources.
• It treats an enterprise as a network of interconnected processes.
• To be ISO-complaint processes should adhere to the standards
described.
• Ensures quality planning, quality control, quality assurance and
quality improvement.
• From S/W engineering view point: An international standard
which provides broad guidance to software developers on how
to Implement, maintain and improve a quality software system
capable of ensuring high quality software
• Consists of 20 requirements...
– Differs from country to country..
ISO 9000 Quality Standards

40. 25
• Management responsibility
• Quality system
• Contract review
• Design Control
• Document and data control
• Purchasing
• Control of customer supplied
product
• Product identification and
traceability
• Process control
• Inspection and testing
• Control of inspection,
measuring and test equipment
• Inspection and test status
• Control of non-confirming
product
• Corrective and preventive
action
• Handling, storage, packaging,
preservation and delivery
• Control of quality records
• Internal quality audits
• Training
• Servicing
• Statistical techniques
ISO 9001 … requirements

41. 27
• SQA must be applied at each step
• SQA might be complex
• Software reviews are important SQA activities
• Statistical SQA helps improve product quality and software process
• Software Safety is essential for critical systems
• ISO 9001 standardizes the SQA activities
Summary