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Software Quality - Control and Assurance |
What is software Quality?
Though there are number of defintions propounded by software gurus in the field - each having its own adherents, two definitions that are widely accepted and are comlementary to each other are
-Conformance to explicitily stated functional and performance requirements, explicitly documented development standards, and implicit characteristics that are expected of all professionally developed software.
-The degree to which a system, component, or process meets specified requirements and customer or user needs or expectations.
Quality control and quality assurance both contribute in delivering a high quality software products though the way they go about it is different.
Software Quality Control is the set of procedures used by organizations to ensure that a software product will meet its quality goals at the best value to the customer, and to continually improve the organization’s ability to produce software products in the future.
Software quality control refers to specified functional requirements as well as non-functional requirements such as supportability, performance and usability. It also refers to the ability for software to perform well in unforeseeable scenarios and to keep a relatively low defect rate.
These specified procedures and outlined requirements leads to the idea of Verification and Validation and software testing.
It is distinct from software quality assurance which includes audits of the quality management system against a standard. Whereas software quality control is a control of products, software quality assurance is a control of processes.
Click here to know all about software testing
Software Quality assurance, or SQA for short, refers to planned and systematic production processes that provide confidence in a product's suitability for its intended purpose. It is a set of activities intended to ensure that products (goods and/or services) satisfy customer requirements in a systematic, reliable fashion. SQA cannot absolutely guarantee the production of quality products, unfortunately, but makes this more likely.
Two key principles characterise QA: "fit for purpose" (the product should be suitable for the intended purpose) and "right first time" (mistakes should be eliminated). QA includes regulation of the quality of raw materials, assemblies, products and components; services related to production; and management, production and inspection processes.
It is important to realize also that quality is determined by the intended users, clients or customers, not by society in general: it is not the same as 'expensive' or 'high quality'. Even goods with low prices can be considered quality items if they meet a market need.
In essence, if QC is about detecting defects, the QA is about avoiding them! QA activities include identifying problems so steps can be taken in the future to avoid those same problems. It includes engineering the processes that are used by the team (analysts, developers, testers, writers) so that high quality products can be built efficiently. And it includes ensuring that each team member is performing his or her job consistently and producing consistently good results.
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