Software quality assurance (SQA) is a means and practice of monitoring all
software engineering processes
A process is a series or set of activities that interact to produce a result; it may occur once-only or be recurrent or periodic.
Things called a process include:
Business and management
*Business process, activities that produce a specific se ...
, methods, and work products to ensure compliance against defined standards. It may include ensuring conformance to standards or models, such as
ISO/IEC 9126 (now superseded by ISO 25010),
SPICE or
CMMI.
It includes standards and procedures that managers, administrators or developers may use to review and audit software products and activities to verify that the software meets quality criteria which link to standards.
SQA encompasses the entire
software development
Software development is the process of conceiving, specifying, designing, programming, documenting, testing, and bug fixing involved in creating and maintaining applications, frameworks, or other software components. Software development invol ...
process, including
requirements engineering,
software design
Software design is the process by which an agent creates a specification of a software artifact intended to accomplish goals, using a set of primitive components and subject to constraints. Software design may refer to either "all the activity ...
,
coding,
code reviews,
source code control,
software configuration management,
testing,
release management
Release management is the process of managing, planning, scheduling and controlling a software build through different stages and environments; it includes testing and deploying software releases.
Relationship with processes
Organizations that ...
and
software integration. It is organized into goals, commitments, abilities, activities, measurements,
verification and validation.
Purpose
SQA involves a three-pronged approach:
* Organization-wide policies, procedures and standards
* Project-specific policies, procedures and standards
* Compliance to appropriate procedures
Guidelines for the application of ISO 9001:2015 to computer software are described in ISO/IEC/IEEE 90003:2018. External entities can be contracted as part of process assessments to verify that projects are standard-compliant. More specifically in case of software,
ISO/IEC 9126 (now superseded by ISO 25010) should be considered and applied for software quality.
Activities
Quality assurance
Quality assurance (QA) is the term used in both manufacturing and service industries to describe the systematic efforts taken to ensure that the product(s) delivered to customer(s) meet with the contractual and other agreed upon performance, design ...
activities take place at each phase of development. Analysts use application technology and techniques to achieve high-quality specifications and designs, such as
model-driven design. Engineers and technicians find bugs and problems with related software quality through testing activities. Standards and process deviations are identified and addressed throughout development by
project manager
A project manager is a professional in the field of project management. Project managers have the responsibility of the planning, procurement and execution of a project, in any undertaking that has a defined scope, defined start and a defined f ...
s or quality managers, who also ensure that changes to functionality, performance, features, architecture and component (''in general:'' changes to product or service
scope
Scope or scopes may refer to:
People with the surname
* Jamie Scope (born 1986), English footballer
* John T. Scopes (1900–1970), central figure in the Scopes Trial regarding the teaching of evolution
Arts, media, and entertainment
* CinemaS ...
) are made only after appropriate review, e.g. as part of
change control board
In software development, projects and programs, a change control board (CCB) is a committee that consists of Subject Matter Experts (''SME'', e.g. software engineers, testing experts, etc.) and Managers (e.g. Quality Assurance managers), who decide ...
s.
See also
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DOD-STD-2167
*
Quality by Design
*
Software assurance
*
Software quality analyst
*
Software quality management
*
Software testing
References
External links
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* "Software Quality Assurance(SQA): Plan, Audit & Review." ''Meet Guru99 – Free Training Tutorials & Video for IT Courses'', www.guru99.com/software-quality-assurance-test-audit-review-makes-your-life-easy.html.
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{{IEEE standards
Quality
Quality assurance
Software quality
IEEE standards