Software Quality Assurance | SQA

(SQA) is a planned and systematic approach to ensure that software process and products conforms to the established standards, processes, and procedures. The goals of SQA are to improve software quality by appropriately monitoring both software and the development process to ensure full compliance with the established standards and procedures. The first step to establish an SQA programis to get the top management's agreement on its goal. It then needs to identify SQA issues, to write SQA plan, to establish standards and SQA functions, to implement the SQA plan and to evaluate SQA program. For SQA to be effective, they must have good people and full management support. High quality software product must be able to run correctly and consistently, have few defects (if there are), handle abnormal situation nicely, and need few installation effort. The defects should not affect the normal use of the software, will not do any destructive things to system, and rarely be evident to the users. Before deciding what measures to use, it is essential to consider the objectives of the measurement program. If the measures will be used to manage software development, they should be objective, timely available and controllable. On the other hand, if the measures are to support decisions on product acceptance, they must reasonably represent user needs.

Definition

SQA is the planned and systematic set of activities that ensure that software process and products conform to requirements, standards, and procedures. "Processes" include all activities involved in designing, coding, testing and maintaining; "products" include software, associated data, documentation, and all supporting and reporting paperwork. The role of SQA is to give management the assurance that the officially established process is actually being implemented. It ensures that:

1. An appropriate development methodology is in place.

2. The projects use standards and procedures in their work.

3. Reviews and audits are conducted.

4. Documentation is produced to support maintenance and enhancement.

5. Software Configuration Management is set up to control change.

6. Testing is performed and passed.

Any deficiencies and deviations are identified and brought to management's attention.