Software Quality

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Introduction to Software Quality
Assurance

• Left: The Ariane 501

rocket’s guidance computer
software just threw an
unchecked exception.

• [Image source: European

Space Agency]

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 Objectives
• What is Quality?

• Characteristics of Quality

• What is Software Quality?

• Why is Software Quality important?

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 Quality:
• Ability of the product/service to fulfill its
function

•Hard to define

• Impossible to measure

• Easy to recognize in its absence

Transparent when present 4
 Characteristics of Quality:

• Quality is not absolute

• Quality is multidimensional

• Quality is subject to constraints

• Quality is about acceptable compromises

• Quality criteria are not independent, but interact with each other
causing conflicts.

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 What is Software ?
• According to the IEEE

Software is:
– Computer programs, procedures, and possibly
associated documentation and data pertaining
to the operation of a computer system.

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 Software Quality:
Kitchen ham (1989 b) refers to software quality “ fitness for
needs” and claims quality involves matching expectations.

Two features of a piece of quality software:

•Conformance to its specification
•Fitness for its intended purpose.

These may be summarized as:

· Is it a good solution?
· Does it address the right problem?

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The Department of Defense (DOD, 1985) in the USA defines
software quality as “ the degree to which the attributes of the
software enable it to perform its intended end use” .

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 What is Software Quality ?
• Conformance to requirements.

• Narrowest sense of software quality.

– Lack of bugs.
– Low defect rate (# of defects/size unit)
– High reliability (number of failures per n hours
of operation).
– Mean Time To Failure (MTTF): probability of
failure-free operation in a specified time.

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 What is Software Quality ?
• According to the IEEE:

• Software quality is:

1. The degree to which a system, component, or
process meets specified requirements.
2. The degree to which a system, component, or
process meets customer or user needs or
expectations.

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 What is Software Quality ?
• According to Pressman:

• Software quality is:

Conformance to explicitly stated functional and

performance requirements, explicitly documented
development standards, and implicit
characteristics that are expected of all
professionally developed software.

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 Importance of Software Quality
• Software is a major component of computer systems (about
80% of the cost) – used for
– Communication (e.g. phone system, email system).
– Health monitoring.
– Transportation (e.g. automobile, aeronautics).
– Economic exchanges (e.g. e-commerce).
– Entertainment.
– etc.
• Software defects are extremely costly in term of
– money
– reputation
– loss of life

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 Importance of Software Quality
• Notable consequences of software errors:
– 1988 shooting down of Airbus 320 by the USS Vincennes -
cryptic and misleading output displayed by tracking software.
– 1991 patriot missile failure - inaccurate calculation of time due
to computer arithmetic errors.
– London Ambulance Service Computer Aided Dispatch System –
several deaths.
– On June 3, 1980, the North American Aerospace Defense
Command (NORAD) reported that the U.S. was under missile
attack.
– First operational launch attempt of the space shuttle, whose
real-time operating software consists of about 500,000 lines of
code, failed - synchronization problem among its flight-control
computers.
– 9 hour breakdown of AT&T's long-distance telephone network -
caused by an untested code patch.

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 Importance of Software Quality
• Ariane 5 explosion June 4, 1996
– First flight of the European Ariane 5 launcher crashed
about 40 seconds after takeoff.
– Cost was about half a billion dollars.
– Explosion was the result of a software error:
– Uncaught exception due to floating-point error:
conversion from a 64-bit integer to a 16-bit signed
integer applied to a larger than expected number.
– Module was re-used without proper testing from
Ariane 4 .
– Error was not supposed to happen with Ariane 4.
– No exception handler.

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 Importance of Software Quality
• Mars Climate Orbiter - September 23, 1999
– Mars Climate Orbiter, disappeared as it began
to orbit Mars.
– Cost about $US 125-million.
– Failure due to error in a transfer of
information between a team in Colorado and a
team in California.
– One team used imperial units (e.g., inches,
feet and pounds) while the other used metric
units for a key spacecraft operation.

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 Importance of Software Quality
• Mars Polar Lander - December, 1999
– Mars Polar Lander, disappeared during landing
on Mars.
– Failure most likely due to unexpected setting of
a single data bit.
– Defect not caught by testing.
– Independent teams tested separate aspects.

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 Importance of Software Quality
• Internet viruses and worms
– Blaster worm (US$ 525 million)
– Sobig.F (US$ 500 million – 1 billion)
• Exploit well known software vulnerabilities
– Software developers do not devote enough
effort to applying lessons learned about the
causes of vulnerabilities.
– Same types of vulnerabilities continue to be
seen in newer versions of products that were in
earlier versions.
• Usability problems
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 Importance of Software Quality
• Monetary impact of poor software quality
(Standish group - 1995)

• 175,000 software projects/year - Average Cost

per project
– Large companies - $US 2,322,000
– Medium companies - $US 1,331,000
– Small companies - $US 434,000

• 31.1% of projects canceled before completed.

– cost $81 billion

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 Importance of Software Quality
• 52.7% of projects exceed their budget - costing
189% of original estimates.
– cost $59 billion
• 16.2% of software projects completed on-time and
on-budget (9% for larger companies).
• Large companies - delivered systems have
approximately only 42% of originally-proposed
features and functions.
• 78.4% of smaller companies projects get deployed
with at least 74.2% of their original features and
functions.

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 Software Errors, software faults and
software failures
• Bug/defect/fault consequence of a human error.
– Results in non-conformance to requirements.
– Manifests as failure in running software.
Software development process

software error
software fault
software failure

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 Nine Causes of Software Errors
• Faulty requirements definition.

• Client-developer communication failures.

• Deliberate deviations from software requirements.

• Logical design errors.

• Coding errors.

• Non-compliance with documentation and coding instructions.

• Shortcomings of the testing process.

• User interface and procedure errors.

• Documentation errors.

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 When are defects introduced?
• The majority of defects are introduced in earlier
phases.
– Requirements are the top factor in a project’s
success or failure.

Phase % of % effort to
defects fix
Requirements 56 82
Design 27 13
Code 7 1
Other 10 4

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 Cost of fixing defects
• Relative cost of fixing defects
– benchmark: cost at requirements phase = 1

Phase found Cost ratio

Requirements 1
Design 3–5
Coding 10
Unit / integration testing 15 - 40
System / acceptance testing 30 – 70
Production 40 - 1000

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