Software Quality Assurance throughout the Software Lifecycle: A Practical Approach

Concept

Experience has shown that software quality must be built in at every stage of the Software Life Cycle. It cannot be added, inspected, or tested-in after the software has been built. This tutorial presents the “best practices’ used in each phase of the software life-cycle to achieve software quality. It presents a practical guide to start taking advantage of these "best practices" used by many SQA, IV&V, and Testing staffs.

Participants will learn:

An introduction and overview of SQA: This includes the purpose, goals, and activities performed by the SQA organization

A discussion of the software life cycle, from Requirements through Maintenance:>

For each phase of the life cycle, the following topics will be addressed

• Activities performed in the phase
• Products developed in the phase
• Reviews conducted in the phase
• Software tools and techniques, and measurements used in this phase

The importance of an SQA Plan: Attendees will learn how to evaluate software quality by participating in SQA related Case Studies

A practical overview designed for technical and managerial professionals concerned with initiating and/or improving an organizations Software Quality Assurance function.

This tutorial is designed for Intermediate/Advanced level professionals.

Outline

Section 1: Introduction

• The rationale for SQA
• The purpose, goals, and activities performed by the SQA staff
• The SQA Plan
• The importance of measurements in SQA

Section 2: Software Life-Cycle Costs

This section will cover examples of life-cycle costs from a number of organizations.

Section 3: SQA throughout the Software Life-Cycle

The major portion of this tutorial will be addressed in this section. This section will cover the phases of the software life-cycle:

• Requirements Phase
• Design Phase
• Code, unit and integration test phase
• System Test phase
• Maintenance phase

For each phase, the following topics will be addressed:

• The activities performed in each phase
• The major products developed in each phase
• The major reviews conducted in each phase
• Other products reviewed in this phase
• Tools, techniques, and measurements applicable to this phase

Section 4: SQA Case Studies and Self Assessment Test

Attendees will learn how SQA teams operate in the real world by participating in Case Studies, as well as taking individual Self Assessment tests.