In 2005, ComputerWorld [Hil05] stated that
“bad software plagues nearly every organization that uses computers, causing lost work-hours during computer downtime, lost or corrupted data, missed sales opportunities, high IT support and maintenance costs, and low customer satisfaction ( Taken from Roger Pressman Book)
A year later, InfoWorld [Fos06] wrote about the
“the sorry state of software quality” reporting that the quality problem had not gotten any better. (Taken From Roger Pressman Book)
I think that both universities or technical education centers that do not force reflection on this topic in their students and industrial companies that do not want to invest to improve software quality.
However, the end of the chain are buyers and consumers of the poorly developed software, the are the ones that can force a change this problem.
Dear Dinesh Bhagwan Hanchate,
Software quality is challenging issue for researchers (development of methods for ensuring and increasing quality), practitioners from software industry (implementation of best practice in development and maintenance), and users that are responsible for providing relevant requirements for software products. In my opinion, all people involved in software life cycle are responsible in a specific way, which is subject for deeper inquiry.
In book (available at Internet)
Pierre Bourque and Richard E. (Dick) Fairley (Editors). Guide to the Software Engineering Body of Knowledge, Version 3.0, SWEBOK. IEEE. 2014.
you can find guidelines in chapter 10 dedicated to software quality.
Regards,
Zeljko
Thank you Dear Zeljko for valuable information and guidance.
Everyone. See Tracz's articles on software reuse, or "Lean Architecture for Agile Software Development" by Coplien and Bjørnvig.
As James said, everyone is responsible, whether they know it or not (i.e. manager imposing unrealistic deadlines). Another interesting small book discussing these quality issues is: "Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering" from Robert Glass.
http://www.amazon.com/Facts-Fallacies-Software-Engineering-Robert/dp/0321117425
Agreed that software quality is an organizational responsibility. It is also an industry responsibility. With the exception of a few targeted conferences, QA is not a popular topic. Investigating the "popular" topics in software engineering you find formal methods (which is too time consuming), architecture, and DevOps (primarily in industry, not academia). Many consider QA topics as begin fully researched, because "everybody" knows how to test.
One of the reasons for the general lack of interest in QA is the low cost of redeploying the corrected software. Most organization are use automated distribution systems. Meaning that as soon as they find a defect it is corrected in the next distribution. Only, regulated software is doing extensive V&V. One example, is to turn on script error checking in your browser. You will be amazed and the number of syntax errors that you find.
Sorry that this is so cynical, but this is one of my primary irritation both in academia and industry.
Dear Carl
No problem, you have given your opinion, that is the best as human being.
Thanks
Quality is related to Customer, People, Process, and Product /Services.I believe the esponsibility is the Humans either they are a client or customer side. That is becuase quality in many cases is subjective. it lies in the eyes of the customer!.
So the passenger in an airliner can establish the quality of the avionics, Or the cancer patient can evaluate the quality of a CT scanner. Pilots and MDs have problems with these things. For some software and hardware the customer can determine the quality customer can assess the quality, but for others the product is of such complexity that even experts in the field have problems. There is no circumstance where the customer can assess the maintainability of the delivered software.
In the aerospace business, SW quality is a relevant element, normally the responsibility is assigned to an independent team in the organization.
The SW PA manager interacts with the SW program manager on a daily basis as well as in planned meeting/project reviews. The main topic is the process definition and the confirmation that the SW fulflls demanding SW quality metrics (procuct and process needs).
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Human-Computer Interaction
- Collaboration