Ccaps Blog

In this second post about software quality, I am going to talk about the comments sent by Jefferson Costa, from QAI Brasil. After reading my first post, The Quest for Quality Software, he sent the following questions:

What is “Quality Software”?
What are the factors involved in this measurement?

In regards to the measurement factors that determine if a software program is of high quality, ISO created a standard the clearly defines how to measure the quality of software. The so-called ISO/IEC 9126 standard goes far beyond stating that quality software is software without bugs. It is divided into six categories, each of them with a corresponding, fundamental question. They are as follows:

Functionality: Does it meet the requirements?
Reliability: Is it fail proof?
Usability: Is it user friendly?
Efficiency: Is it fast and lean?
Maintainability: Is it easy to modify?
Portability: Is it easy to deploy in different environments?

Therefore, we can say that these are the factors that enable quality measurement.

While reading about this standard, we can have an idea of what is quality software: it is software that combines each and all categories mentioned above. But the quality of software is also directly linked to the quality of processes used during development. But that’s another conversation, as we would have to talk about the project life cycle, CMM, etc.

Who knows, maybe in the next post? =)

Hello People! I am going to start a series of posts talking about Software Quality.

Quality, today, is not just about a company having a market differential to sell more and increase profits, but a pre-requisite that must be conquered in order to get their product into the global market. Quality is a subject that is frequently discussed but rarely practiced. Missed deadlines, low productivity, inefficient quality control and high costs seem to be some of barriers that new technologies cannot overcome.

But in the end, what is software quality? In order to address the issue, it is necessary that we understand what “Quality Software” means exactly. There are several definitions. Some people tried to explain quality in a simple way and came up with definitions such as:

“Quality is to comply with customer requirements.”
“Quality is to anticipate and meet the customer’s wishes.”

We can also say that all the problems related to software quality fall in one of these two categories: lack of Quality of Compliance and lack of Quality of Performance.

Quality of Compliance refers to the adherence of the product to the purpose for which it was built. On the other hand, Quality of Performance refers to the capacity of the product to perform its desired function. In terms of software, this means lack of bugs, infrastructure (hardware) fault tolerance, user error tolerance, etc.

But why one should worry about software quality? There are some obvious reasons, as nobody likes to use a software program with bugs. These technical problems can cause enormous losses, such as the malfunctioning of a million dollar satellite. They can also cause multiple digit losses to a banking institution, prevent telephone carriers to provide long distance calls (and this has already happened with AT&T) or even cause a blackout in various cities. Ask people in India how inconvenient blackouts can be…

This is not all. Quality, today, is crucial for the survival of a company that wants to be successful in the global software market. An organization cannot succeed in this market if they do not produce quality software and if the clients do not have access to high quality products and services.

Contrary to what many think, the return on investment in quality is short. When quality improves, so does productivity, and the costs decrease due to lower rework rates and minimum waste. Not to mention the improvement in customer satisfaction, which often results in increased market share.

In the next post, I will talk about the costs of investing in quality. Stay tuned!