Software

Quality
Management

Software quality manageme

Concerned with ensuring that the required

level of quality is achieved in a software
product.
Involves defining appropriate quality
standards and procedures and ensuring tha
these are followed.
Should aim to develop a quality culture
where quality is seen as everyones
responsibility.

What is quality?
Quality, simplistically, means that a product
should meet its specification.
This is problematical for software systems

- There is a tension between customer quality

requirements (efficiency, reliability, etc.) and develop
quality requirements (maintainability, reusability, etc
- Some quality requirements are difficult to specify in a
unambiguous way;
- Software specifications are usually incomplete and
often inconsistent.

The quality compromise

We cannot wait for specifications to improv

before paying attention to quality
management.
We must put quality management procedur
into place to improve quality in spite of
imperfect specification.

Scope of quality manageme

Quality management is particularly importa

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 establishing a quality culture.

Quality management activiti

Quality assurance

- Establish organisational procedures and standards fo

quality.

Quality planning

- Select applicable procedures and standards for a particu

project and modify these as required.

Quality control

- Ensure that procedures and standards are followed by t

software development team.

Quality management should be separate from

project management to ensure independence.

Process and product qualit

The quality of a developed product is

influenced by the quality of the production
process.
This is important in software development a
some product quality attributes are hard to
assess.
However, there is a very complex and poor
understood relationship between software
processes and product quality.

Process-based quality

There is a straightforward link between process and produ

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
an accelerated development schedule may impair product quality

Care must be taken not to impose inappropriate process

standards - these could reduce rather than improve the
product quality.

Practical process quality

Define process standards such as how revie

should be conducted, configuration
management, etc.
Monitor the development process to ensur
that standards are being followed.
Report on the process to project manageme
and software procurer.
Dont use inappropriate practices simply
because standards have been established.

Quality assurance and standa

Standards are the key to effective quality

management.
They may be international, national,
organizational or project standards.
Product standards define characteristics t
all components should exhibit e.g. a common
programming style.
Process standards define how the softwa
process should be enacted.

Importance of standards

Encapsulation of best practice- avoids

repetition of past mistakes.
They are a framework for quality assurance
processes - they involve checking complianc
to standards.
They provide continuity - new staff can
understand the organisation by understandi
the standards that are used.

Product and process standar

Product standards
Design review form

Process standa rds

Design review conduct

Requirements document structure Submission of documents to CM

Method header format

Version release process

Java programming style

Project plan approval process

Project plan format

Change control process

Change request form

Test recording process

Problems with standards

They may not be seen as relevant and up-t

date by software engineers.
They often involve too much bureaucratic
form filling.
If they are unsupported by software tools,
tedious manual work is often involved to
maintain the documentation associated wi
the standards.

Standards development

Involve practitioners in development. Engineers

should understand the rationale underlying a
standard.
Review standards and their usage regularly.
Standards can quickly become outdated and thi
reduces their credibility amongst practitioners.
Detailed standards should have associated tool
support. Excessive clerical work is the most
significant complaint against standards.

ISO 9000

An international set of standards for qualit

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 using the standard.

ISO 9001
Management responsibility
Control of non-conforming products

Quality system
Design control

Handling, storage, packaging and Purchasing

delivery
Purchaser-supplied products

Product identification and traceability

Proces s control

Inspection and testing

Inspection and test equipment

Inspection and test status

Contract review

Corrective action

Document control

Quality records

Internal quality audits

Training

Servicing

Statistical techniques

ISO 9000 certification

Quality standards and procedures should be

documented in an organisational quality
manual.
An external body may certify that an
organisations quality manual conforms to IS
9000 standards.
Some customers require suppliers to be ISO
9000 certified although the need for flexibilit
here is increasingly recognised.

Documentation standards
Particularly important - documents are the tangible
manifestation of the software.
Documentation process standards

- Concerned with how documents should be developed, validated a

maintained.

Document standards

- Concerned with document contents, structure, and appearance

Document interchange standards

- Concerned with the compatibility of electronic documents.

Document standards
Document identification standards
- How documents are uniquely identified.

Document structure standards

- Standard structure for project documents.

Document presentation standards

- Define fonts and styles, use of logos, etc.

Document update standards

- Define how changes from previous versions ar

reflected in a document.

Document interchange standa

Interchange standards allow electronic documents to be

exchanged, mailed, etc.
Documents 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
use of style sheets and macros.
Need for archiving. The lifetime of word processing systems
may be much less than the lifetime of the software being
documented. An archiving standard may be defined to ens
that the document can be accessed in future.

Quality planning

A quality plan sets out the desired produc

qualities and how these are assessed and
defines the most significant quality attribute
The quality plan should define the quality
assessment process.
It should set out which organisational
standards should be applied and, where
necessary, define new standards to be use

Quality plans
Quality plan structure
- 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 attribute

Safety

Understandability

Portability

Security

Testability

Usability

Reliability

Adaptability

Reusability

Resilience

Modularity

Efficiency

Robustness

Complexity

Lea rnability

Quality control

This involves checking the software

development process to ensure that
procedures and standards are being followe
There are two approaches to quality contro

- Quality reviews;
- Automated software assessment and software
measurement.

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 i
documentation to find potential problems.
There are different types of review with different objective
- Inspections for defect removal (product);
- Reviews for progress assessment (product and process);
- Quality reviews (product and standards).

Types of review
Review type

Principal purpose

Design or program
inspections

To detect detailed errors in the requirements, design or code. A checklist of

possible errors should drive the review.

Progres s reviews

Quality reviews

To provide information for management about the overall progress of the

projec t. This is b oth a proces s and a product review and is concerned with
costs, plans and schedules.
To carry out a t echnical analysis of product components or documentation to
find mis matches between the s pecification and the comp onent design, code or
documentation and to ensure that defined quality standards have been followed.

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 be reviewed.
Software or documents may be 'signed off' at a
review which signifies that progress to the next
development stage has been approved by
management.

Review functions

Quality function - they are part of the gener

quality management process.
Project management function - they provid
information for project managers.
Training and communication function product knowledge is passed between
development team members.

Quality reviews

The objective is the discovery of system

defects and inconsistencies.
Any documents produced in the process ma
be reviewed.
Review teams should be relatively small an
reviews should be fairly short.
Records should always be maintained of
quality reviews.

Review results
Comments made during the review should be
classified

- No action. No change to the software or documentation is

required;
- Refer for repair. Designer or programmer should correct an identifi
fault;
- Reconsider overall design. The problem identified in the
review impacts other parts of the design. Some overall
judgement must be made about the most cost-effective way of sol
the problem;

Requirements and specification errors may

have to be referred to the client.

Software measurement and metr

Software measurement is concerned with deriving a nume

value for an attribute of a software product or process.
This allows for objective comparisons between technique
and processes.
Although some companies have introduced measurement
programmes, most organisations still dont make systema
use of software measurement.
There are few established standards in this area.

Software metric

Any type of measurement which relates to a software syste

process or related documentation

- Lines of code in a program, the Fog index, number of person-day

required to develop a component.

Allow the software and the software process to

be quantified.
May be used to predict product attributes or to control th
software process.
Product metrics can be used for general predictions or to
identify anomalous components.

Metrics assumptions

A software property can be measured.

The relationship exists between what we can
measure and what we want to know. We can only measu
internal attributes but are often more interested in extern
software attributes.
This relationship has been formalised and
validated.
It may be difficult to relate what can be measured to desira
external quality attributes.

Internal and external attribut

The measurement proces

A software measurement process may be pa

of a quality control process.
Data collected during this process should b
maintained as an organisational resource.
Once a measurement database has been
established, comparisons across projects
become possible.

Product measurement proce

Data collection
A metrics programme should be based on
set of product and process data.
Data should be collected immediately (not
retrospect) and, if possible, automatically.
Three types of automatic data collection
- Static product analysis;
- Dynamic product analysis;
- Process data collation.

Data accuracy
Dont collect unnecessary data

- The questions to be answered should be decide

in advance and the required data identified.

Tell people why the data is being collected

- It should not be part of personnel evaluation.

Dont rely on memory

- Collect data when it is generated not after a
project has finished.

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

program in execution;
- Static metrics which are collected by measurements made of th
system representations;
- Dynamic metrics help assess efficiency and reliability; static metr
help assess complexity, understandability and maintainability.

Dynamic and static metric

Dynamic metrics are closely related to software quality

attributes
- It is relatively easy to measure the response time of a system
(performance attribute) or the number of failures (reliability
attribute).

Static metrics have an indirect relationship with quality

attributes

- You need to try and derive a relationship between these metrics an

properties such as complexity, understandability and maintainabi

Software product metrics

Software metric

Description

Fan in/Fan-out

Fan-in is a measure of the number of functions or methods that call some other function
or method (say X). Fan-out is the number of functions that are called by function X. A
high value for fan-in means that X i s tightly coupled to the res t of the des ign and
changes to X will have extensive knock-on effects. A high value for fan-out suggests
that the overall complexity of X m ay be high because of the comp lexity of the control
logic needed to coordinate the called comp onents.

Le ngth of code

This is a measure of the size of a program. Generally, the larger the size of the code of a
component, the more complex and error-prone that component is likely to be. Length of
code has been shown to be one of the most reliable metrics for predicting errorpronenes s in components.

Cyclomatic complexity This is a m easure of the control complexity of a p rogram. This control complexity may
be related to program understandability. I discuss how to compute cyclomatic
complexity in Chapter 22.
Le ngth of identifiers

This is a measure of the average length of distinct identifiers in a p rogram. The longer
the identifiers, the mo re likely they are to be m eaningful and hence the mo re
understandable the program.

Depth of conditional
nesting

This is a measure of the depth of nesting of if-statements in a program. Deeply nested if

statements are hard to unders tand and are potentially error-prone.

Fog index

This is a measure of the average length of words and sentences in documents. The higher
the value for the Fog index, the more difficult the document is to understand.

Object-oriented metrics
Object-oriented Description
metric
Dep th of inhe ritance This represents the nu mber of discrete levels in the inher it ance tree whe re subtree
classes inhe rit attributes and oper ation s (methods ) from supe r-classes. The
deep er the inhe rit ance tree, the more complex the design . Many di fferent ob ject
classes may have to be unde rstood to unde rstand the ob ject classes at the leaves
of the tree.
Method fan-in/fanout

This is dir ectly related to fan-in and fan-ou t as described above and means
essentially the same thing. How ever, it m ay be appropr iate to make a
distinction between calls from other methods within the obj ect and calls from
external method s.

Weighted methods
per class

This is the number of method s that are included in a class we ighted by the
complexity of each method. The refore, a simple method may hav e a complexity
of 1 and a large and complex method a much high er value. The larger the value
for this metric, the more complex the ob ject c lass. Comp le x ob jects are more
li kely to be more difficult to under stand . They may not be logicall y cohes ive so
canno t be reused effectively as sup er-classes in an inhe rit ance tree.

Number of
ove rriding
ope rations

This is the number of ope rations in a super -class that are ove r-ridden in a sub class. A high va lue for this metric indicates that the super-class used may no t be
an appropr iate parent for the sub-class.

Measurement analysis

It is not always obvious what data means

- Analysing collected data is very difficult.

Professional statisticians should be consulte

if available.
Data analysis must take local circumstance
into account.

Measurement surprises

Reducing the number of faults in a program

leads to an increased number of help desk
calls

- The program is now thought of as more reliabl

and so has a wider more diverse market. The
percentage of users who call the help desk may
have decreased but the total may increase;
- A more reliable system is used in a different wa
from a system where users work around the
faults. This leads to more help desk calls.

Key points

Software quality management is concerne

with ensuring that software meets its requir
standards.
Quality assurance procedures should be
documented in an organisational quality
manual.
Software standards are an encapsulation o
best practice.
Reviews are the most widely used approac
for assessing software quality.

Key points

Software measurement gathers informatio

about both the software process and the
software product.
Product quality metrics should be used to
identify potentially problematical
components.
There are no standardised and universally
applicable software metrics.