Software Quality Assurance (SQA) : Introduction

• The set of activities responsible for ensuring quality in software engineering process that ultimately result in software quality in a software product is known as software quality assurance.
• It is an umbrella activity that ensures the conformance to standards for the software product throughout the phases of SDLC.

Software Quality Assurance : Activities

• There are eight major SQA activities which includes:
  1. Management plan.
  2. Applying software engineering techniques.
  3. Conducting formal technical reviews.
  4. Applying a multitier testing criteria.
  5. Controlling change.
  6. Measuring impact of change.
  7. Performing SQA audits.
  8. Keeping records and reports.

Software Quality Assurance : Major Issues

• Software quality assurance being an umbrella activity, does consists of some issues too. These are:
  1. SQA Cost
     • SQA cost is the main reason why small scale companies hesitate to use SQA as a part of their development plan.
     • It increases the cost as it is a different team that works separately from the development team. A new team means, they need to be paid too which ultimately results in higher costs.
  2. SQA Complexity
     • For a simple application to build, SQA can be implemented easily. But, for an application that is complex in nature, it might take more time to be build which will result in more complexity while implementing SQA.
     • So, higher the complexity of software, more difficult is to implement SQA.
  3. SQA Integration
     • The major concern while implementing SQA is its integration with applications.
     • Due to rapid advancement in the application development , SQA integrated currently will no longer be the best fit after five years. Hence, it needs up gradation too.
  4. Demand For Faster Development
     • The software that has to be integrated with SQA must be developed more faster than any other applications.
  5. Defective Software
     • With a perfect software SQA implementation and working will be a cakewalk. But it is not the case with defective software. Defective software will not be compatible with SQA and will not generate desired results.
     • Hence, to implement SQA a perfect software with minimum defects is required and it is the main reason why small scale companies steps down to opt for SQA.

Software Quality Assurance : Techniques

• Audit is the major SQA technique that is used while handling operations related to SQA.
• Audits are used to review management processes, technical processes and assurance processes to provide an indication of quality and status of the software product.
• The purpose of using an audit is to assure that proper control procedures are being followed and required documentation is being maintained accordingly.
• The other SQA techniques which are used in SQA implementation are:
  • Reviews.
  • Meetings.