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 Institute’s 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 ManagementPMBOK • 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 ManagementPMBOK • 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