Quality assurance and quality control in the software development process

Abstract

Quality has become an important concept in the marketplace recently. Have American workers traditionally produced "garbage"? Have standards for quality ever been defined? The intense competition created by the automobile industry in the last decade has sent an important message home. The importance of producing a quality product has come of age.The quality "spirit" has overflowed from the auto industry into almost all other industries in the United States, with good cause: the weak economy of the previous few years and increased penetration of our marketplace by foreign competitors have proven that nothing can replace a quality product. Quality has its place also in the information systems industry. Quality assurance and quality control exist to check and verify a developer's software product. A good structured system design, plus an aggressive assurance effort, allow information system products to meet customer expectations and approval.This research paper, Quality Assurance and Quality Control in the Software Development Process, reviews QA's place in system design, development and test. Different quality control techniques are discussed for the DP environment, and the payoffs and costs of QA are reviewed.The following is the bibliography used in this paper. The author is interested on discussion and suggestions on this topic, and he can be reached at: Andrew E. Yiannakos, IBM Corporation, New York Advanced Education Center, 909 Third Avenue, New York, New York, 10022.