Muhhammad Shahzad, [email protected] Science DepartmentVirtual University Of PakistanAbstract—Keywords— SQA (Software Quality assurance), ISO (international standard of Organization), SDLC (Software development Life Cycle), QA (Quality Assessment), ED (Error Detection), PI (problem identification).I.
INTRODUCTIONSoftware advancement is the one of quickest developing business range in all discipline of the corporation. Every filed of life is now depended on the software base application. So due to this reason the business of software development organizations are growing day by day. As the demands of the software application increases, load of software development is also increases on the organization. So the organization may want to produce more application in little amount of time.
This situation cause poor quality product. So to overcome this problem, Software Quality Assurance (SQA) process is introduced. In this process, all the quality attribute of eth software products are examine and check the quality attribute of the application.For refining and improving the SQA procedure, Fagan introduce a new technique called software inspection in 1976 1.
It is widely recognize as an efficient technique to access, improve and observe the excellence of the software application. Defects error and bugs of the software can be reduces by using Software inspection. Software inspection process involve the critical examination of every stage of Software development life cycle (SDLC) like, Documentation, requirement analysis, code inspection, design inspection etc.Analysis reveals that, if the errors and defects of the software applications are recognized before the start of the next phase of SDLC, then the maintenance cast of these defects and flaws are much lower than the maintenance cast of bugs at the end of software development. And the early recognition of errors and defects of each phase of SDLC is only possible due the implementation of software inspection before start of next phase. Software inspection is a technique that is basically used to inspect the each stage of the SDLC. This technique is performed after completion of every phase of the development cycle.
During this process error and faults are detected and remove before start of next stage. Inspection team consists of number of qualified and expert personnel 2. It is performed by the most experience personnel of the human inspector. During this process, different sessions and meetings are conducted before the start of next phase. So due to this inspection process, faults and error are identified and remove it from the product.In this paper, i want to establish a relation between Software Inspection and Software Quality Assurance.
How these two techniques are connected to each other? How Software Inspection improve the quality of software applications.This paper consists of different chapter. Chapter I provide the brief introduction of the paper. Chapter II give the literature Review about Software Inspection and Software Quality assurance.
Chapter III tells about the research methodologies adopted in this paper. In chapter IV process of Software Inspection and Software Quality assurance are explained. In Chapter V, I discussed the facts and figure, which relate SI and SQA to each other. Chapter VI give the conclusionabout all the discussion. References are given at the end of the chapter.II. LITERATURE REVIEWMany research paper and articles are published by different researcher about Software Quality Assurance and software inspections.
Each of them explains the software quality assurance and inspection methodologies. Following literature have been reviewed before writing this paper.Sneed and Merey (1985) 3 work on the number of tools. These tools are used for both techniques i.e for supporting the software development cycle and for removing defects and flaws during inspection process on the bases of requirement definition of software application. Furthermore Owe and Yaacob (1996) 4 enhanced their former study and conduct a survey in Malaysian software industry.
They try to express the trends of SQA investments in the organization. In this survey, try discussing many problems facing during SQA and Software Inspection process. They discuss the tools that are used in the SDLC and software inspection, people involved in these technique.Maneela Tuteja, Gaurav Dubey, says that, the main goal of any software project is provide quality product that remain the market for a long period of time.
In the absence of software inspection and Quality assurance plan, we cannot be able to guess the excellence level of software application. This thesis report relates various types of testing technique that we can apply in measuring various quality attributes 5.David L. Parnas, and Mark Lawford 6 says that, generally doing inspection we means that investigation of Product by using pre-define, systematic procedure that aims to determine whether the product is appropriate for its intended use.
For example, many jurisdictions require vehicle safety inspections. (Some advocates of specific approaches to software inspection assume that their method defines ?inspection.? In fact, the word was well defined much earlier.) They legislate a list of parts that must be examined, measurements that must be made, and so on, and criteria for passing the inspection. The word ?inspection? usually implies that the process is described in documents (for example, checklists and printed forms) that explain exactly what the inspectors must do.
In this paper, David L. Pranas try to confirm that inspection must be done very carefully and it must be complete in every aspect. If there is any neglect in inspection process may produce defetcs and flaws in the application 6.Mark Lawford writes apaper on Role of Software inspection in SQA 7, he says that, Inspection seeks to complement testing. Testing is the process that helps us for the detection of errors, bugs and fault. While formal verification helps to find the mathematical correctness. In addition to finding errors in code, requirement document, design and other essential software documents, inspection can also give precision in maintaining and ongoing activities of the SDLC. This process also ensure that, weather coding style guidelines for software programming are followed or not, Comments must be relevant and must have appropriate length etc.
MICHAEL Y. SHARYGIN, B.Sc.
, M.Sc 8 write in his paper about the software inspection. He says that, without using of realistic and cost-effective methods for the verification of correctness, conciseness and user oriented requirement of the software designs and implementations, organization may not be able to produce quality product. Software inspection plays a key role for validating of all the problems mentioned above.
The goal of inspection Problem identification, error detection quality assessment etc. All these activities may increase the life of eth software application.III. RESEARCH METHODOLOGYCause and effect are two main techniques for describing the relation between any two entities.
In this paper first of all I will explain and define the software inspection processes and Software Quality Assurance then describe goals of these two techniques. And then describe the relation between them.IV.
SOFTWARE INSPECTIONThe inspection activity is a systematic approach that aims to detect defects in software artifacts. Thisactivity is performed on each phase of the SDLC, asit is completed. Before starting of eth next phase,inspection inspect the previous phase and detectionand correction of errors are performed. Since it wasintroduced in IBM around 70’s, by Michael Fagan,the inspection activity is considered one of the bestsoftware engineering practices to identify defects9.
Application defects are identified by humaninspector during the inspection process by doingcritical examination of each and every phase of theSDLC. The inspection process can be easilyexpressed by following figure.Fig 1.1 Explain the Software Inspection Process1.This figure shows the clear picture of theprocedure of the software inspection process. Itshows that, first of all, we must have satisfied thepre-condition of the software inspection process. Itmean that, we have all the requirement likes,inspector for the inspection, suitable place,moderators and all the other personnel who takepart in the process.
The following figure explainsthe entry condition of the inspection process.Fig 1.2 Explain the Software Inspection Process2.It gives clearer picture of the process.
Topof the picture explain complete process of thesoftware inspection. Process involve followingsteps.i) Planning.ii) Overview.iii) Detection.
iv) Collection.v) Correction.vi) Follow-up Activity.The right corner shows the role ofthe personnel during the inspection process.
i) Organizer.ii) Moderator.iii) Inspector.iv) Author.v) Recorder.vi) Presenter.
Organizer organizes the wholeprocess of the inspection. His responsibilityincludes,i) Selection of dates.ii) Selection of time.iii) Selection of place.iv) Informing the personnel.v) Insuring that, the entire participantsare present etc.Moderator is very important andresponsible person in the inspectionpersonnel. He has following responsibilities.
i) Start the process.ii) Provide some informative materialbefore the meeting.iii) Ensure that, every member of themeeting is prepared him/herself forthe inspection.
iv) Checking the performance of theinspectors etc.Inspector actually inspects thesoftware application. He performs followingjob.i) Inspect the application.ii) Must have some back groundknowledge about the product.
iii) Detect the error and bugs.Author is the person, who actually develops the application. He provides the over view of the application and functional requirement of the application.Recorder records all the activities of the meeting. He also records all the defects and errors that are point out by the inspector.V. SOFTWARE QUALITY ASSURANCESoftware Quality assurance is a special type of activity that is applied throughout the SDLC 10. Main goal of software quality assurance is that, to provide data to first line manager about the quality of the product.
This process guaranteed that the product going to the market must be perfect and user friendly by quality and functionality wise. Some other feature SQA processes are given below 11.i) Estimate the quality of eth product in term of defect removal efficiency.ii) Measuring the defect removal efficiency and assign severity level to each of the identified defect during inspection process or any other activity.iii) Moderating and participating in formal inspections.
iv) SQA group also monitor the software product with respect to the ISO standards.v) Applying the Quality function deployment to the software product.vi) Review all the document during the SDLC by inspection processes and ensured that all the activity done according to the pre-defined requirement.vii) Approving the release of the application to customer by certifying acceptable quality levels.viii) Reporting the potential quality measure to the top management of the organization.ix) It also conducts the inspection processes under its own supervision.x) It also reviews the test plane for ensuring the testing methodologies of eth product.
VI. ANALYSIS.When we perform critical analysis of eth above discussion and the analysis of all the literature that are reviewed before writing this paper, one thing is clear that, the combination of Software Inspection and Software Quality Assurance is very essential for producing quality product. The following figure show some problems, that are arises during development process without applying software inspection and software quality assurance procedure.Fig.2.1 Show the defect origin & Detection without inspection 11.
This figure tells us that, if we develop a software application, without using SI and SQA, then the Defects are discover at the end stage of the SDLC. Then at this stage to recover the error and defects become very difficult. At this stage removal of defects are very costly and time consuming.But when we perform SQA and SI before starting next phase of SDLC, then our development process look like this.Fig 2.
2. Show the defect origin & Detection with inspection 11.In this case, every defect and error is discovered and removes before working on the next stage.
This gives us a very quality product.VII. CONCLUSIONOn the above discussion, it is concluded that, Software inspection and software quality assurance has very close relation between them. Without software inspection an organization cannot be able to produce a quality product. This may cause to lose the market shares and good will.
Those organizations that have insignificant Inspection and SQA process, cannot fight the market.REFERENCES1 M. Fagan.
Design and code inspections to reduce errors in program development. IBM Systems Journal, 15(3):182–211, 1976.2 Oliver Laitenberger, A Survey of Software Inspection Technologies, Fraunhofer Institute for Experimental Software Engineering (IESE) Sauerwiesen 6 D-67661 Kaiserslautern, Germany Email: [email protected].
3 Sneed H.M., and Merey A.
(1985) Automated Software Quality Assurance? IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering. 909-9164 Owe S.W., and Yaacob M.H.
(1996) A Survey on Software Quality Assurance – A Malaysian Perspective. Proceedings of the 1996 IEEEComputer Society Information Systems Conference of New Zealand (ISCNZ’96) pp 154-1635 Maneela Tuteja, Gaurav Dubey, A Research Study on importance of Testing and Quality Assurance in Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) Models6 David L. parnas and Mark Lawford. Role of inspection in Sofwate quality Assurance7 Mark Lawford, McMaster University, David L. Parnas, University of Limerick, Inspection’s Role in Software Quality Assurance.
8 MICHAEL Y. SHARYGIN, B.Sc., M.
Sc INSPECTION OF SOFTWARE THAT HAS NOT BEEN COMPLETELY DESCRIBED9 Anderson, P.; Reps, T.; Teitelbaum, T. 2003. Design and implementation of a fine-grained software inspection tool. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 29(8), pp. 721-733.
10 Roger S. Pressman, Ph.D. Software Engineering. A Practitioner’s Approach.11 Ronald A.
Radice. Software Inspections Tata-McGH, 2003, Capers jons, Software Quality: Analysis and Guidelines for Success12
