What is Software Quality and how to measure it?

Software development engineer in testDenys Zaiats

What is software quality?It's not only about the finding of bugs.It's not only about quantity of the tests.

What is software quality?

"Software quality is a field of study and practice that describes the desirable attributes of software products."

-Dan Houston, Ph.D.

How to measure quality?1. Correctness: Conformance to the specifications and user requirements.2. Reliability: Performing expected function with required precision.3. Efficiency: Amount of resources required to execute required function.4. Integrity: security features or security controls implemented in software.5. Usability: Effort required to understand, learn and operate the software.

How to measure quality?6. Maintainability: Effort required to maintain the software.7. Testability: Effort required to test the software.8. Flexibility: Effort required to make changes to the software.9. Portability: Effort required to port software from one to other platform or to configuration.10. Interoperability: Effort required to couple systems with one another.

How to measure quality?

Correctn

ess

Reliabilit

y

Efficiency

Integrity

Usabilit

y

Maintai

nabilit

y

Testabilit

y

Flexib

ility

Portabilit

y

Interoperabilit

y0123456789

10

Points

Points

But how to measure it?• Scrum Poker• Points from 1 to 10 (better scalability)

Why not?You know how to predict the points for the stories in advance!

How to follow the best practices?• Correctness – keep Your requirement

specifications and all the documentations always up-to-date.

• Reliability – define and implement all the features of the product as precisely as it's possible.

• Efficiency – calculate amount of the costs and resources which needs for the implementation of the function. Is it efficient?

• Integrity – is You application secure? It's very important, especially for big commercial application!

How to follow the best practices?• Maintainability – need to gather all the feedbacks

from the team which is responsible for maintenance. Are they happy or not?

• Testability – follow the best practices of the agile testing (Testing agile pyramid)

• Flexibility – follow best practices of software engineering. Remember You will require to change some features in the future.

• Interoperability – how easy the system could be integrated with another systems?

How often measure it?Each 4 weeks. Usually it’s 2 sprints. After measurement nice to compare previous and current chart. This technique allows to keep: High quality of the product High quality of the processes High quality of software development

Who should care about it?

Team!

Because of:

How to improve a quality?• Automate everything that could be efficiently

automated from the perspective of money and time. Don’t waste many time on automation of one small scenario which is not important for business.

• Keep documentation for the automation testing always up-to date. Use frameworks for the keeping of living documentation.

• Use efficient instruments which match project’s requirements as much as possible.