Software Quality

Question 1

What is the main aim of Software Engineering Processes introduced in the 1960s?

Answer 1

To improve software quality by adding process, methods, and ensuring quality.

Question 2

What is the goal of a Software Quality Team?

Answer 2

To ensure a good SE process is chosen and that all aspects are done well.

Question 3

What are the three main responsibilities of a QA Team?

Answer 3

Planning for quality, defining standards and procedures, and checking project conformity.

Question 4

Why is Quality Management considered a culture?

Answer 4

Because it should be pervasive throughout the project, reducing failures at release.

Question 5

What are Product Standards in QA?

Answer 5

Standards for documentation, coding conventions, class structure, etc.

Question 6

What are Process Standards in QA?

Answer 6

Defined good practices at each stage of the SE process.

Question 7

What are key sections of a Quality Plan document?

Answer 7

Product introduction, Product plans, Process description, Quality goals, Risks & Risk Management.

Question 8

What are examples of measurable quality metrics?

Answer 8

Lines of code, Fog Index (readability of comments) - code/predictor measures
Number of reported faults, person days for coding - control/process measures

Question 9

How can you plan for quality?

Answer 9

Identify standards that will be met
Recommend quality-promoting processes for the project
Identify what will count as good quality for that product

Question 10

What are the risks of quality driven culture?

Answer 10

QA team become the nasty people that make you do unnecessary work
It’s good to let teams be in charge of what excellence is for them and the QA team facilitates/holds them to that

Question 11

Quality checking inspections

Answer 11

Paired coding - informal inspections
Traditional inspections - 3-7 people examine a concrete SE output, focus on finding problems and non-conformance to standards, check for completeness, missing or incorrect logical steps, does everything make sense
Review leader, recorder, reviewers (from QA team, a project manager, devs)

Question 12

Output of a QA inspection

Answer 12

List of problems that need fixing

Question 13

Agile retrospectives

Answer 13

After each sprint
Dev team reflects on progress, good and bad
Things to optimise or avoid

Question 14

Agile postmortems

Answer 14

End of project review - focus on issues experienced
Hard to do without blaming people
Look for root-causes

Question 15

Code/predictor measures …

Answer 15

Help you judge quality of the code

Question 16

Control/process measures…

Answer 16

Measure the success of you rSE process