Software quality assurance (or SQA for short) is the ongoing process that ensures the software product meets and complies with the organization’s established and standardized quality specifications. SQA is a set of activities that verifies that everyone involved with the project has correctly implemented all procedures and processes.

SQA works parallel to software development, an ongoing activity applied throughout the software development life cycle. Instead of making quality checks after completion, software quality assurance checks for quality issues in each development phase.

SQA Techniques:

• Auditing.

This technique involves QA professionals inspecting the work to see if all standards are followed.

• Reviewing.

In-house and outside stakeholders meet to examine the product, make comments on what they find, and get approval.

• Code Inspection.

This technique is a formal code review using static testing to find bugs and defects. This inspection requires a trained peer or mediator, not the original code author. The inspection is based on established rules, checklists, and entry and exit criteria.

• Simulation.

Simulation models real-life conditions to virtually examine system behavior.

• Functional Testing.

This technique is a form of black-box testing where the QA person verifies what the system does without caring about how it got there.

• Walkthroughs.

Walkthroughs are peer reviews where the developer guides development team members through the product. Members then raise queries, suggest alternatives, and make comments about possible errors, standard violations, or any possible issues.

• Stress Testing.

Nothing shows you how good a program is than running it under high-demand conditions.

• Six Sigma.

This is a well-respected quality assurance philosophy that strives for nearly perfect products or services. Six Sigma’s main objective is a 99.76 % defect-free product.

Benefits of Software Quality Assurance:

• It saves money. Errors are costly. If a company releases a flawed application, they will have to follow it up by releasing fixes, patches, and sometimes even complete upgrades. These cost money. Furthermore, software companies can lose business (as in, money!) if they have a reputation for poor quality, buggy software.
• It saves time. CrossTalk, the Journal of Defense Software Engineering, reports it could take up to 150 times longer to fix an error in production than to fix that error in the design stage.
• It prevents breakdowns and similar catastrophes. Taking a cue from the first two points, breakdowns cost money, are time-consuming, and deny customers access to the product or service. If there’s anything worse than a program with a few kinks and bugs in it, it’s an application that ultimately fails.
• It boosts consumer confidence. You can spend so much time creating a good reputation, only to lose it overnight. Conversely, customers will flock to companies that are known for producing quality releases.
• It increases your market share. High-quality software puts your company in a stronger, more dominant market position.

Software quality metrics are a subset of software metrics that focus on the quality aspects of the product, process, and project. These are more closely associated with process and product metrics than

Product Quality Metrics

This metric includes the following −

• Mean Time to Failure: This metric is mostly used with safety critical systems such as the airline traffic control systems, avionics, and weapons.

• Defect Density: It measures code quality per unit.

• Customer Problems:It measures the problems that customers encounter when using the product.

• Customer Satisfaction:Customer satisfaction is often measured by customer survey data through the five-point scale −Very satisfied,Satisfied,Neutral,Dissatisfied,Very dissatisfied

In-process Quality Metrics:

In-process quality metrics deals with the tracking of defect arrival during formal machine testing for some organizations. This metric includes −

• Defect density during machine testing
• Defect arrival pattern during machine testing
• Phase-based defect removal pattern
• Defect removal effectiveness

Benefits:

Engineering metrics provide valuable benefits for organizations that develop software.

• They can help increase the overall quality of the product.
• They can increase team productivity.
• Metrics can even help you reduce costs by alerting you early on about problems that may show up in all stages of the software development life cycle.

Hardware and software costs including maintenance:

The main purpose of software maintenance is to modify and update software applications after delivery to correct faults and to improve performance.

IT service providers suggest their consumers to go for software maintenance services for the enhanced and steady performance of the system. When it comes to software, 60% costing is abide for maintenance and from total software maintenance cost, 60% is for solution enhancement.

Travel and training costs:

using electronic communications systems such as e-mail, shared web sites and videoconferencing can significantly reduce the travel required. Electronic conferencing also means that travelling time is reduced and time can be used more productively in software development. In  project making every other meeting a videoconference rather than a face-to-face meeting reduced travel costs and time by almost 50%.

Effort costs:

These costs are all part of the total effort cost:

• Costs of providing, heating and lighting office space
• Costs of support staff such as accountants, administrators, system managers, cleaners and technicians
• Costs of networking and communications
• Costs of central facilities such as a library or recreational facilities
• Costs of Social Security and employee benefits such as pensions and health insurance