Software Project Management

1
Software Project Management

• Lecture 12

2
Outline

• Chapter 26 Quality Management
• What is Quality?
• Meaning of Quality in Various Context
• Software Quality
• Project Quality Management
• Quality Planning
• Quality Assurance
• Quality Control
• Cost of Quality

3
What is Quality?

• British Standard Institutes definition
• Quality is totality of features characteristics
  of a product or service which relate on its
  ability to satisfy a given need.
• American Heritage Dictionary definition
• Quality is characteristic or attribute of
  something.
• Quality of Software
• Quality of Software is software that does what it
  is supposed to do.
• Customer dissatisfaction is lack of quality.

4
Quality in Various Context

• In Manufacturing Context
• Quality means that the developed product should
  meet its specification.
• In Software Development Context
• Quality would mean that a software product
  conforms to its specification
• Software specification should be oriented towards
  customer requirements.
• There may be some implicit requirements like
  maintainability, usability, etc. but they are not
  included in the specification.

5
Quality in Various Context (Contd.)

• Practically, its very difficult to write complete
  software specifications/ characteristics.
• Therefore, although the product conforms to its
  specifications, it may not satisfy the customer
  as hence may not be considered as a high quality
  product.

6
Another School of Thought

• Quality can be achieved by defining standards
  organizational quality procedures that check that
  these standards are followed by the software
  development team
• Besides standards procedures there are
  intangible aspects also involved in software
  quality like elegance, readability, etc.

7
Software Quality (All purpose definition)

• Although there are many definitions of quality
  but for our purposes, software quality is
  conformance to
• the explicitly stated functional performance
  requirements,
• explicitly documented development standards
• implicit characteristics that are expected of all
  professionally developed software

8
Software Quality (All purpose definition)

• This definition emphasizes on 3 important points
• S/W requirements a foundation from which
  quality is measured
• Standards define development criteria against
  which S/W is engineered
• Implicit requirements often go unmentioned but
  if not met, can cause suspicion in quality

9
Project Quality Management PMBOK

• It is a subset of project management.
• It includes the processes required to ensure that
  the project will satisfy the needs for which it
  was undertaken.
• It includes all the activities of the overall
  management function that determine the quality
  policy, objectives and responsibilities and
  implements them by means such as quality
  planning, quality assurance, quality control and
  quality improvement, within the quality system
  

International Organization for Standardization.
ISO 8402.1994. Quality Management and Quality
Assurance. Geneva, Switerland ISO Press
10
Project Quality Management PMBOK

• Hence the major project quality management
  processes are
• Quality Planning
• Identifying quality standards relevant to project
  and determining how to satisfy them
• Quality Assurance
• Evaluating overall project performance on a
  regular basis to ensure that project will satisfy
  the relevant quality standards
• Quality Control
• Monitoring specific project results to determine
  their compliance to relevant standards and
  identifying ways to eliminate causes of
  unsatisfactory performance

11
Project Quality Management Overview
12
Please note that

• PMBOK Guide describes the quality management
  compatible with
• Quality as defined by ISO (ISO 9000 and 10000
  series of standards)
• Proprietary approaches recommended by Deming,
  Juran, Crosby and others
• Non proprietary approaches such as Total Quality
  Management (TQM), Continuous Improvement and
  others

13
Project Quality Management Quality Planning
14
Project Quality Management

• Quality Planning Inputs
• Quality Policy
• Overall intentions direction of organization
  with regard to quality, formally expressed by top
  management.
• Scope Statement
• Documents major deliverables and project
  objectives as per stakeholders requirements
• Product description
• Contains details of tech. issues that may affect
  quality
• Standards and regulations
• Application area specific standards and
  regulations
• Other process outputs
• Processes in other (PMBOK) knowledge areas may
  produce certain outputs that may be considered in
  quality planning

15
Project Quality Management

• Quality Planning Tools Techniques
• Benefit/cost analysis
• This analysis must be considered in quality
  planning. Benefits mostly outweigh the costs.
• Primary benefit of meeting quality requirements
  is less rework. Primary cost of meeting quality
  requirements is expenses of project quality
  management.
• Benchmarking
• Comparing actual or planned project activities to
  those of other (appropriate) projects for
  improvement and performance measurement.
• Flowcharting
• Diagrams that show how various elements
  inter-relate. This may help project team to
  anticipate what and where quality problems may
  occur.

16

• Design of experiments
• Statistical method to help identify factors that
  may influence specific variables, applied to
  product of project.
• Cost of quality (discussed later in detail)
• Total cost of all efforts to achieve
  product/service quality

17
Project Quality Management

• Quality Planning Outputs
• Quality Management Plan
• Describes how project team will implement the
  quality policy (organizational structure,
  responsibilities, procedures, processes,
  resources to implement quality management)
• Operational Definitions
• Describe what something is and how it is measured
  by the quality control process.
• Checklists
• Used to verify if a required set of steps has
  been performed
• Inputs to other processes
• Quality planning may identify need for further
  activity in other areas

18
Project Quality Management Quality Assurance
19
Project Quality Management

• Quality Assurance Input
• Quality management plan
• Output of quality planning
• Results of quality control measurements
• Records of quality control testing and
  measurement in a format for comparison and
  analysis
• Operational definitions
• Output of quality planning

20
Project Quality Management

• Quality Assurance Tools Techniques
• Quality planning tools and techniques
• As discussed in quality planning section
• Quality audits
• A structured review of quality management
  activities which can be random or scheduled.
• The objective is to identify lessons learned to
  improve performance this project and other
  projects within the organization.
• Auditors can be in-house or from third-party.

21
Project Quality Management

• Quality Assurance Outputs
• Quality Improvement
• Includes actions to increase effectiveness and
  efficiency of project.
• Implementing quality improvements include change
  requests, corrective actions, etc. and are
  handled according to procedures of change control.

22
Project Quality Management Quality Control
23
Project Quality Management

• Quality Control Inputs
• Work results
• Both process and product results information
  about the planned or expected results (from
  project plan) should be available along with
  information about actual results/
• Quality management plan
• Output of quality planning
• Operational definitions
• Output of quality planning
• Checklists
• Output of quality planning

24
Project Quality Management

• Quality Control Tools Techniques
• Inspection
• Includes activities such as measuring, examining
  and testing to determine whether results conform
  to requirements. Inspections are also called
  reviews, audits, walkthroughs.
• Control charts
• These are graphic display of results, over time,
  of a process.
• They can be used to monitor any type of output
  variable, for example, cost and schedule
  variances, volume and frequency of scope changes,
  errors in projects, etc.
• Pareto diagrams
• It is a histogram ordered by frequency of
  occurrence, that shows how many results were
  generated by type or category of identified
  cause.
• Problems causing greatest number of defects
  should be fixed first.
• Conceptually these diagrams are related to Pareto
  Principle (80/20 principle 80 of problems are
  due to 20 causes)

25

• Statistical sampling
• It involves choosing part of a population of
  interest for inspection, e.g., selecting 10 engg.
  drawings randomly from 75.
• Appropriate sampling (technique) can reduce cost
  of quality control.
• Flowcharting
• As described earlier helps in problem analysis
• Trend analysis
• Mathematical techniques to forecast future
  outcomes based on historical data. Trend analysis
  is used to monitor
• technical performance how many errors or
  defects have been identified, how many remain
  uncorrected
• Cost and schedule performance how many
  activities per period were completed with
  significant variances

26
Project Quality Management

• Quality Control Outputs
• Quality improvement
• As described earlier
• Acceptance decisions
• Items inspected may be accepted or rejected.
  Rejected items may require rework.
• Rework
• It is to bring the defective or unconforming item
  in compliance with the requirements or
  specifications.
• Completed checklists
• Completed checklists become part of project
  record.
• Process adjustments
• Involve immediate corrective or preventive action
  as a result of quality control measurements.

27
Project Quality Management

• Quality Management is an umbrella activity that
  is applied through out the software process.
• Every one involved in software engineering
  process is responsible for quality.
• Emphasis on quality in all software engineering
  activities reduces the amount of rework that the
  software engineering team must do
• this eventually lowers costs, improves time to
  market
• The team must identify SQA activities that will
  filter errors out of the work products before
  they are passed on. But before doing so,
• they must define software quality at different
  levels of abstraction
• SQA Plan is created to define the quality
  strategy of the team

28
Cost of Quality

• It includes all costs incurred in performing
  quality related activities
• Cost of quality studies are conducted to
• Provide a baseline for current cost of quality
• Identify opportunities for reducing cost of
  quality
• Provide normalized basis of comparison (usually
  in dollars)
• Quality costs are divided into
• Prevention costs
• Appraisal costs
• Failure costs

29
Cost of Quality (Contd.)

• Prevention costs relate to
• Quality planning
• Formal technical reviews
• Test equipment
• training
• Appraisal costs relate to
• Activities to gain insight into product first
  time through each process, e.g.,
• In-process and inter process inspection
• Equipment calibration maintenance
• testing

30
Cost of Quality (Contd.)

• Failure costs
• Those that would disappear if no defects appeared
  before shipping a product to customer
• Failure costs subdivided into 2 types
• Internal failure costs (related to defects found
  before product is shipped)
• Rework, repair failure analysis mode
• External failure costs (related to defects found
  after product is shipped)
• Complaint resolution, product return and
  replacement, helpline support warranty work

31
Relative cost of correcting an error

• Refer to figure 26.1

32
References

• Various topics from Chapter 26 Roger Pressman
• Project Quality Management from PMBOK2000