Importance Of Software Quality And Quality Management For Hi Tech Corp

Importance of software quality

Critically evaluate why software quality and software quality management is important for Hi Tech Corp. Identify and evaluate the quality factors that affecting Hi Tech Corp’s products.

High tech Corp is a company that has been established in 22 February 1998. They provide import and export sales, manufacturing and sale of equipments of communication. They also produce laser equipments, equipments for optical communication and parts related to it (Moorthi, Thorpe and Josephson, 2018). They also import as well as export industrial equipments, machine tools, equipments and parts of biotechnology and medical equipments. they import, export and sale used machines as well as accessories. They aim in creating a company as well as society which is enriched by luxurious lives (Moorthi, Thorpe and Josephson, 2018). They believe that by implementing new technologies as well as products will be a great way for contributing to society. This contribution also includes realizing as well as detecting the demands of next generations. They follow some basic lessons. These lessons include not giving up, take challenges seriously, responding quickly and hone foresight (Moorthi, Thorpe and Josephson, 2018). Software quality is very important for every organization that involves software works in their daily work. Organizations that use various softwares in order to improve their business need to maintain a good quality software. Along with that the software quality management is also very important (Moorthi, Thorpe and Josephson, 2018). This report discusses the importance of software quality and software quality management in Hi Tech Corp. It further represents a software quality assurance plan for the company.

Importance of software quality

Software used by a company should be free of loopholes. Any organization having software with many defects would result in bad functioning of the company (Reddy, Prasad and Murthy, 2017). This would result in poor quality of products manufactured. Errors in designing of software may take place in many forms. It may also happen to the most successful businesses. The quality of software is very important because of some important reasons:

Affect on bottom line

A good quality of software has a good impact on the bottom-line of a company. Many organizations use their economy which is caused by the defective software used by them. Defective software can cause malfunctions in the functioning of the organization (Reddy, Prasad and Murthy, 2017). Hi Tech Corp should use defect free software for their business. This would result in better production, export as well as import of their products. Good software also prevents the organization from crime caused during various transactions. This crime can be caused by the internal sources or external sources (Breu, Kuntzmann-Combelles and Felderer, 2014). If the organization uses defective software, any employee may take advantage of it in order to earn more by illegal means. If a customer comes to know regarding the loophole in the software of the organization, he might take advantage of it, attempt crime, and perform fake transactions.

Importance of software quality management

Delay in project completion

Nowadays organizations use various software in order to work on their projects. The data regarding the project and its proceedings are saved in the software. Any defect in the software may delay the project and delay its proceeding (El-Halees and Alnajjar, 2015). Sometimes the defective software may cause the workers to redo their work. Backtracking and solving the problem caused by the software is the most problematic thing. The expense incurred in redoing the process depends on when the loophole has been detected. If the loophole has been detected in the initial stage of the project it can be redone, but if it is detected ear the end of the project, it is very difficult, time consuming and costly to redo the project. This is because as the project proceeds according to its requirements, the cost incurred is very high (Hassan, Afzal and Lindström, 2016). As a result, the cost incurred in fixing the software issue would be very high as well. If the problem is detected in the initial stage, the product can be manufactured after fixing the issue. After the product has already been in the market and then after its usage an issue occurs, it will be a loss to the company. This is the reason why software quality is very important.

Importance of software quality management

The quality of software used by an organization should be perfect in order to manufacture products inefficiently. Most of the time the initialization of the software is done wrong, this results in error in the whole process (Reddy and Murthy, 2017). It also leads to extra costs incurred in the damage of the software. It can be avoided by hiring a professional company for testing the functioning of the software. The software quality assurance is very important in order to plug in all the loopholes, which can cause major loss to the business. Some factors that define the need of software quality management are as follows.

More cost incurred

The poor management of software leads to more cost incurred. During the initial stage of software development method and process, necessary effort as well as time should be invested in order to monitor the process (Chillarege, 2017). A small mistake in the initialization of the process may cause a huge damage to the overall process. The costs that are incurred due to bad quality can be avoided by designing and implementing the software a proper way. Some major points that could help in preventing bad quality of software are as follows

• The understanding of measurement of software quality is very important.
• The quality of the software should be measured after its development.
• Proper tools should be utilized while designing the software.

Quality Planning

Application of these processes would save the cost incurred in the end due to some issues in the software.

Quality Planning

It is a process of developing a plan for the quality of the software that has to be maintained. The plan would define the requirements of the software and would describe the accessing of the software (Miguel, Mauricio and Rodríguez, 2014). This plan selects the standards of the organization, which are proper for a specific product as well as development process. The quality planning includes of various parts.

• Introduction of the product
• Planning of the product
• Description of the process
• Goals of the quality
• Risk as well as risk management

This plan defines the important attributes of the software. It also includes the definition of process of quality assessment. The attributes of software quality are as follows.

Security	Testability	Usability
Resilience	Modularity	Efficiency
Maintainability
Safety	Understandability	Portability
Reliability	Adaptability	Reusability
Robustness	Complexity	Learn ability

Table 1: Attributes of software quality

Quality reviews

Quality reviews are widely used process for validating quality of a particular product or a process. Quality review involves a group of people who are experienced (Bashir, Lee, Khan, 2016.). These people examine all the parts of the software process, documents associated with it and the system. The results from the review are recorded and they are provided to the author in order to correct the detected problems.

Quality control

Quality control monitors the development of the process in order to ensure that the processes, which assure the quality of standard and procedure, are well followed (Fenton and Bieman, 2014). The deliverables of the process of software development are checked across the project standards in the process of quality control. The quality of the project is checked by the regular reviews that were obtained. This quality reviews are done by a team that consists a specific number of people. They review the software process as well as the software. This is done in order to check the standard of the project are being followed. It also checks that the project standards are followed as well as the documents and the software confirms the standards.

Software measurement

Software measurement gives a value in numeric for the quality attributes of the software product as well as software process. The numerical values are compared to the drawn standards express the quality of the software. This measurement of software products could be used to draw predictions regarding a software system. It also helps in identifying components of the software. Software metric is described as a measurement, which relates to attributes of quality of a software process or system (Liu,  Zhang and Kato, 2015). Measuring the quality of external software process or system is almost impossible. These attributes include understandability, maintainability and many more. In these cases, the external attributes are related to the internal attributes. This is done because it is assumed that there is a relationship between internal and external attributes in order to predict the characteristics of external software (Goetsch and Davis, 2014). This includes three conditions they are as follows

• The accurate measurement of internal attributes.
• The relationship between what can be measured and external behavioral attributes.
• The relationship should be very well understood, is validated as well as can be expressed in the terms of some mathematical formula.

Quality reviews

Product metrics

Software qualities, which are easily measured like size, do not contain a consistent relationship with the quality attributes like maintainability and understandability (Krajewski, Ritzman and Malhotra, 2015). The products metrics contain two classes. These classes are as follows

• Dynamic metrics: These kinds of metrics can be measured while the program is executed.
• Static metrics: these metrics are based on the measurements that are made of the representations of a particular system (Ross, 2017). The systems are program, design or documentation.

Various factors affect the products of High Tech Corp. these factors include

Money

Money is the most important factor that affects the quality of the product. The quality of product depends on the amount of cost incurred in the production. Nowadays organizations are facing a very tough competition. High Tech Corp is facing a major problem because of the cost incurred in the production of the products (Parkay, Anctil and Hass, 2014). This as a result affects the quality of the product that has been manufactured. It needs to invest a huge amount of money improve the quality of the products manufactured. Most of the customers prefer products of good quality than huge amount of products.

Materials

The resources used for manufacturing the products are very important. The quality of the product depends on the quality of resources used (Misztal and Bachorz, 2014). High Tech Corp needs to improve the quality of resources used for the production of products.

People

People that are recruited for production, designing the products should have proper knowledge as well as experience in their field of specialization. If inexperienced people are recruited and they are made to work without any training, they will make many mistakes and this will lead in effect the organization (Harper, 2015). The employees in High Tech Corp were not provided enough training, which would help them in their work. This led in the production of poor quality of products. This in turn reduced the revenue of the company.

Management

The quality control and the maintenance programs are supposed to get the support from the top management. If the management were conscious regarding the quality of products instead of the quantity of the product manufactured, the organization would be able to maintain a good quality of products (Slater, Mohr and Sengupta, 2014). High Tech Corp has always concentrated on the amount of products produced rather than the quality of products produced. This has led in the production of more products but the quality is very cheap. The management of quality would lead in better products.

Machines and Methods

In order to maintain the high standard of quality o the products, organizations should invest enough in new machines. They should also follow new procedures as well as methods in order to get the most productivity (Shipilov, Godart and Clement, 2017). High Tech Corp has not been using the latest software or technologies in order to produce the products or services. They should update their software and get updated machines in order to get efficient production.

Quality control

Market

The market for products should exist before the management emphasizes the quality of product. The market of the product is very vital for the product to be sold. Without the market, the product would be useless (Shipilov, Godart and Clement, 2017). The lack of market would be a loss for the company. for example people do not need woolen clothes in hot weather. So it would be useless to manufacture woolen clothes in summers. For this, it is necessary to understand the need of the customers (Shipilov, Godart and Clement, 2017). High Tech Corp has been manufacturing products that were not necessary by the customers. This has lead to the decrease in revenue of the company.

Price elasticity

Price elasticity should be maintained by every organization. High Tech Corp had high price of its products. This led in fewer sales of its products (Shipilov, Godart and Clement, 2017). The customers who needed their products got it from their opponent companies. This resulted in decrease of their revenue.

The function of the software quality, which ensures that the standards, procedures and processes are perfect for project, is called software quality assurance. It also ensures that the process is very well implemented.

ISO

ISO 9001 is an international list of standards. This set can be used for developing the system of quality management in all the industries. The ISO 9001 standards can be implemented to a wide range of companies (Hoyle, 2017). It can be implemented in the industries of manufacturing as well as service industries. ISO 9001 is one of the most general standards among all the standards. ISO 9001 can be applied to the organizations that develop, design and maintain the products as well as development in the quality of the processes. The standard of IOS 9001 is not specific to the software development. It also includes the general principles. These general principles can be applied to the projects that aim in software development (Hoyle, 2017). The ISO 9001 standards describe the different aspects of quality process. It also defines the procedures and standards of an organization that should be followed during the product development. The set of standards as well as procedures are included in the manual of organizational quality. The standard of ISO 9001 would not define quality processes, which would be utilized in the process of development (Hoyle, 2017). Various organizations are allowed to develop their own quality processes. They can remain ISO 9000 complaint organizations. ISO 9000 standard just needs the definition of the process that is to be used in the company. It is not related with the ensuring that the processes give better practices as well as very good quality of products (Hoyle, 2017). The ISO 9000 certification does not represent that the software manufactured by ISO 9000 certified organizations would be better compared to the software developed by uncertified organizations.

CMMI model

CMMI (Capability Maturity Model Integration) is regarding processes. It is an approach to improve processes for software development. It also examines the current processes as well as identifies the strengths and weaknesses (Pane and Sarno, 2015). After this the process changes, modifications and improvements are allowed to change the weaknesses into the strengths. This model is a collection of a set of effective as well as reliable practices. These practices can help an organization to improve the quality, efficiency and standards. It consists of various process areas like project planning, configuration management and many more (Pane and Sarno, 2015). CMMI model has been widely adapted in various organizations in order to prove the efficiency as well as reputation of the organization. Organizations adapting CMMI model have many advantages they are as follows

• CMMI model provides a very good RoI (Return on Investment).
• After adaption of the CMMI model business gets heighted success.
• It is very much compatible with the various methodologies that are quality related, such as ISO Standard, 6-Sigma and ITIL.
• CMMI model is evolving and improving.

Implication of CMMI has contributed in software testing it helps in various ways

• It improves the quality of software that has been developed.
• It increases customer satisfaction.
• It helps the organization to achieve their targeted cost savings.
• This model ensures stability as well as continuous high performance.

CMMI is not only applied to processes. It is also applicable to work groups, rules, people, projects and people (Pane and Sarno, 2015). In order to implement CMMI effectively in the organization some steps should be followed, they are as follows

• Staff members that are to be trained should be chosen. The staff members should be chosen wisely. They should be trained in the fields of their expertise.
• Creation of engineer process groups should be monitored well.
• CMMI consultants should be included for consulting regarding the implementation of the model.
• Appropriate tools should be selected.
• Quality processes as well as practices should be implemented. The processes and the practices that are being implemented should good enough for the company. It should have a positive impact on the company.
• CMMI model should be implemented to various projects.
• The practices that have been implemented should be learnt as well as improved (Pane and Sarno, 2015). The employees should know the processes that have been implemented in the processing of the company. The employees should be provided training regarding the processes and how do they work.
• Various projects should be added under the model. The model is very helpful for the projects so it should be applied for most of the project for the betterment of the company.

Conclusion

From the above report it can be concluded that High Tech Corp import as well as export industrial equipments, machine tools, equipments and parts of biotechnology and medical equipments. They create a company as well as society that is enriched by luxirous lives. Various factors affect the products of the company, all those factors are mentions above in the report such as flexibility of price, procedures used, training, machines used, resources used and many more. The report also consists information regarding software quality and how the quality of the software has to be maintained.

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