Software Quality Assurance Methods and Techniques

(CTM #7) or (CSTP Elective)

This tutorial covers area 7 of the Test Management Body of Knowledge (TMBOK) required for the Certified Test Manager (CTM) certification. This tutorial also counts as an elective towards the requirements of the Certified Software Test Professional certification.

For cost and cities where this course might be offered, check our Public Training Schedule.To bring this course to your test team at your location, contact our Education and Professionals Services Group.

Concepts

Many software organizations try to achieve software quality by focusing on testing activities that are normally done after the product has been put together by the development team. Every project manager and every test managers know that this is not a very effective way to assure the quality of the application. The reason is that when the testers execute their tests against the application and find bugs, those bug reports go back to the development team, which in turn tries to fix problems under time pressure. And you know the rest of the story: more bugs get created and the cycle continues. More bugs, more bug reports and more bugs.

For many years, experts and pioneers in software quality have suggested that software organizations focus more on the front-end of the software lifecycle to build quality into software rather than trying to test for quality at the end. This course covers all quality assurance methods and techniques that aim at achieving this goal of building quality into the software. The course is a must for every project manager, QA manager and test manger.

Participants

Course participants will learn:

• The difference between quality assurance and quality control
• How to effectively plan, execute, and verify plans to deliver quality software
• How to start an effort to implement process improvement even in small projects
• How to select between different quality assurance methods to get the most ROI
• How to implement a cost effective inspection process that works with all types of project and all types of artifacts

Outline

• Quality Assurance Vs Quality Control
• Defining processes
• Implementing Quality Assurance
• Developing effective standards
• Inspections and review of artifacts other than code
• Development and Test lifecycles and methodologies
• QA concepts, methods and approaches
• Prominent quality assurance models such as CMM/CMMI, Six Sigma, IEEE standards, TQM, and ISO
• ROI justification for Quality Assurance
• Quality Assurance according to W. Edwards Deming
• Quality Assurance for modern development methodologies: RAD, Agile and eXtreme
• Independent Verification and Validation