Page 230 -

CHAPTER 8 SOFTWARE QUALITY ASSURANCE 201

ware development been conducted according to pre-established standards? Have
technical disciplines properly performed their roles as part of the SQA activity? The
SQA group attempts to answer these and other questions to ensure that software
quality is maintained.

8.3.2 SQA Activities
Software quality assurance is composed of a variety of tasks associated with two dif-
ferent constituencies—the software engineers who do technical work and an SQA
group that has responsibility for quality assurance planning, oversight, record keep-
ing, analysis, and reporting.
Software engineers address quality (and perform quality assurance and quality
control activities) by applying solid technical methods and measures, conducting for-
mal technical reviews, and performing well-planned software testing. Only reviews
are discussed in this chapter. Technology topics are discussed in Parts Three through
Five of this book.
The charter of the SQA group is to assist the software team in achieving a high-
quality end product. The Software Engineering Institute [PAU93] recommends a set
of SQA activities that address quality assurance planning, oversight, record keeping,
analysis, and reporting. These activities are performed (or facilitated) by an inde-
pendent SQA group that:
Prepares an SQA plan for a project. The plan is developed during project plan-
? What is the ning and is reviewed by all interested parties. Quality assurance activities performed
role of an
SQA group? by the software engineering team and the SQA group are governed by the plan. The
plan identifies

• evaluations to be performed
• audits and reviews to be performed
• standards that are applicable to the project
• procedures for error reporting and tracking
• documents to be produced by the SQA group
• amount of feedback provided to the software project team

Participates in the development of the project’s software process descrip-
tion. The software team selects a process for the work to be performed. The SQA
group reviews the process description for compliance with organizational policy,
internal software standards, externally imposed standards (e.g., ISO-9001), and other
parts of the software project plan.

Reviews software engineering activities to verify compliance with the defined
software process. The SQA group identifies, documents, and tracks deviations from
the process and verifies that corrections have been made.